


Redux

by Auntarctica, Greekhoop



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Brothaaaaa, Hurt/Comfort, Liquid flouncing, M/M, Twincest, chiaroscuro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:03:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 50,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auntarctica/pseuds/Auntarctica, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/pseuds/Greekhoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snake and Otacon retrieve Liquid's body from the Patriots' lab, only to find it completely unsuited to their purposes. <s>A repost from our halcyon days, and unlikely to ever be finished.</s> PLOT TWIST. We're finishing this sumbitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Greekhoop and I have been aware for some time that _les infants terribles_ brothercest is the universe's special gift to perverts. So, we joined forces to co-write this fic. For Liquid, who needs the love. Slight AU, with eventual pornographic spackle to patch the gaps. While it's commonly accepted that Liquid expired from FOXDIE, it's never expressly stated. We play within the latitude of that idea.

_"Sois mon frere on te meurs."  
\--Sébastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort_

 

 

 

The fucker was heavier than heaven.

He’d never have expected it to be like this. Granted, he hadn’t known him long, but given the amount of times they’d wound up grappling ungracefully in their short acquaintance, he thought he’d had a pretty good handle on the physicality of Liquid Snake. But live weight was live weight, and Liquid was meat. 

And therein, Snake thought, grunting, was the variable that he’d missed. Otacon would never’ve missed something like that. Something science-y. But then, Otacon couldn’t even carry a full load of groceries up the stairs without having an ever-loving asthma attack, so Snake supposed they were even. Or something.

Liquid hadn’t felt this heavy in life. He was a lean guy, if ripped, rangy but not massive, for Christ’s sake. Snake could only conclude that the deadness was the difference. There was obviously something integral about the way the living Liquid had held himself, something about isometric polarity and dynamic tension, something that made him slightly less cumbersome than a goddamn supernova. It was like wrestling dark matter in a gunny-sack.

The sole thing that stopped him from dragging Liquid by his handy hair all the way from the Patriot’s bunker had been the rampant blooming of contusions that stained the once-luminious skin. He hadn’t liked the look of that. Didn’t particularly want to add to it. Liquid’s body was the spitting image of his own, after all, and it made him uneasy enough dragging his own corpse around in effigy. He wasn’t about to batter it as well. Yeah, things looked bad enough as they were.

He was glad he’d brought a body bag, glad he’d thought to do that, as he’d hustled the limp form of his brother inside and sealed him up, tossing him over his shoulder.

Now he was back at Philanthropy’s HQ, standing at the freight elevator with his unpleasant cargo, and gladder still.

The elevator lurched to life, slowly flashing by the floors of abandoned crates and boxes, eventually reaching the top floor. Looking up and waiting to arrive, Snake could see the white-painted brick and many-paned windows of the old converted space. Now Snake could see Otacon, through the heavy diamond grating, staring predictably into a blue screen that lit his pallid face, oblivious to everything else. The area around his person was a small, glowing oasis beneath the thirty-foot ceiling.

The elevator shuddered and jerked to a violent stop, startling the oasis, which shimmered and quivered, not unlike a mirage.

“Snake?” ventured Hal tentatively. “Is that you?”

“No.”

“Snake…why didn’t you take the stairs? You know the elevator is sketchy…”

“Why’d I let you talk me into a warehouse loft?” he snarled by way of a greeting, as Otacon hurried to help him slide the metal grating of the elevator door aside. 

“You’ve got him. Good, Snake. How’s he look?” Otacon had a cookie clamped absently between his teeth, and an earnest expression that annoyed Snake.

“You may want to finish your snack before you take a gander,” he said, sourly.

“Let me give you a hand.”

“Good idea. He’s like a damn anvil.”

Otacon smiled and pocketed the cookie, reaching out gamely, if awkwardly, to assist. “How heavy can he be?” quipped Hal. “He’s your brother.”

Snake uttered a vague noise of displeasure that made no particular comment as he shoved the front end of the body unceremoniously into Otacon’s arms. There was panting, and laboring, and several near disastrous missteps by Hal, that nearly resulted in pitching the corpse, but eventually they had wrangled him into submission.

Liquid was proving to be as unruly in death as he’d been in life…if a whole lot less flippant.

They laid him out, and rolled him right, and Snake yanked open the bag without preamble, far enough to show his face. And now Liquid lay on the steel table, all zippered up fashionably in black nylon.

“He looks…bad,” Hal said, frowning. 

“Rode hard, put away wet,” agreed Snake. He looked at Liquid’s battered body for a moment longer, then shrugged. “Well, have fun.”

"H-hey!" Otacon stammered. He recoiled sharply, banging a leg in the table so Liquid's head lolled to the side, spilling limp blond hair over his gaunt cheek and parted, pale lips.

He didn't look peaceful, and he certainly didn't look asleep; he just looked tired. There were deep lines carved around his eyes, as though he had spent a long time braced against pain. His skin was white as ashes.

Otacon pulled the corner of the body bag up to cover Liquid's face. "You're not going to leave me alone with him, are you?"

"He's dead, Hal," Snake said. "Or didn't you notice?"

"I know. But…" Otacon gestured ineffectually with one hand. "He's your brother. Aren't you going to stay? It seems like… you should stay."

Snake shook his head. "Don't be so morbid. I already did all the hard work. I just need you to get him on ice."

He turned to go, toward the back portion of the loft, where they had converted some old offices into bedrooms. The pipes kicked up a real racket when you tried to run the shower, but at least the water was almost always hot.

Otacon's lips twitched in annoyance, but he knew better than to argue. He made a show of clearing some of the empty soda cans off the table, waiting for Snake to leave. In spite of everything, he didn't want the man to see him cringe.

It wasn't until he heard the shower rattle to life that he turned his attention back to Liquid's body. The black nylon had slipped away from his face again, but a curtain of pale hair hid almost everything but his eyes.

Otacon took Liquid's jaw between both hands, turning him so he was facing up once more. His skin was icy, but there was no resistance, and that surprised him. It had been a few months, and Liquid should have been stiff as a board. But then, who knew what they had done to him in that laboratory? Otacon didn't, that was for sure.

He had never had any flare for the biological sciences. He had thought, in his younger years, that they might hold some interest for him, but the thought of all those warm guts, those wet and slimy and squishing insides, had sent him running right back to the cold certainty of hard mathematics and classical physics.

There was nothing dangerous about numbers, after all.

"Well," Otacon said aloud, just to break the silence. "Here we are. I never thought I'd see you again, you know."

He hesitated, then brushed some of Liquid's hair out of his eyes. He reached for the front of the body bag, sliding the zipper down, past the hollow of Liquid's throat, past his breastbone, past the curve of his ribs, to his navel. His skin was splattered with bruises, so dark they seemed to reach down to his very bones.

"Don't feel so bad," Otacon said. "Things like this only happen because they're supposed to." He gave Liquid a little pat on the cheek – just a short, sharp tap of his fingers – and then started to turn away.

A hand closed around his wrist.

It was not a firm grip, but cold and pleading. Otacon's first attempt at a cry caught in his throat like a copper coin, and all that came out was a harsh, rasping cough.

He turned slowly, and his eyes met Liquid's. Wide open, now. Ice-blue and frightened. His lips were open, too, and Otacon could see that he was struggling for breath.

He made a little noise, low in his throat.

And then Otacon screamed.


	2. Chapter 2

Traditionally, Hal Emmerich did not display 'athletic aptitude'.

In seventh grade gym class he had proved to be dismally maladroit at the rope climb, and was left dangling fruitlessly, legs akimbo, as he flailed like Don Quixote at the worse end of a windmill. And so had his father, and his father before him. It was part of the Emmerich legacy, as indelible as hereditary astigmatism, or lactose intolerance.

But the primal imperative is a strong drive, thought Hal, as he effortlessly vaulted the low leather couch, shrieking.

"Snake!" he wailed, socks slipping on the floor as he headed toward the back of the apartment. Anything to put some space between himself and Liquid. He had seen enough zombie movies to know what this meant.

_"Snaaaaaaake!"_

It took a lot of talent to make Snake's name sound like it was actually comprised of three syllables, but Otacon had gotten a lot of practice back at Shadow Moses.

“This had better not be another fucking spider, Hal.” Sharply violent, rubbery squeals punctuated Snake’s words, followed by the heavy sound of rapidly hammering footsteps on the vintage, wide-plank floors. “I told you, just use a fucking magazine!”

Otacon had papered himself to the back wall, palms flat and feebly grasping, traumatized and tenuously clinging to fading hopes of continence. His eyes were wide, glued to the battered blond mannequin that lay prone on the table, a nightmare butterfly weakly shifting in its nylon chrysalis.

“I would say they’re more scared of you than you are of them, but fucking Christ, Hal-”

His panic mounting, Hal turned toward the sound in desperation.

And there was Snake, glorious Snake, reassuringly profane, a gun clamped in his fist, his jaw distended in a combat-ready rictus. “What the fuck is your damage, Otacon?” he demanded, nakedly.

Otacon screamed again, forgetting all about Liquid’s untimely reprise.

Snake stared, looking disgruntled. “Holy shit, Hal. I’m not gonna teabag you. I jumped straight out of the shower- what the hell do you want from me?”

Hal plastered his hands over his glasses. “He’s not dead,” he moaned, hysterically. “Liquid’s not dead.”

Snake’s eyes constricted, then widened, in rapid succession. “What?” he said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Please…get a towel.”

Snake ignored him, advancing on the barely animate form, eyes narrowed. As he neared the table he could see that Otacon was less wrong than right. And Liquid, for the moment, was entirely less dead than alive.

Which wasn’t saying much.

Snake studied his brother’s vital signs with a jaded, calculating eye, sidling closer. Liquid was distinctly un-pretty. The low light of the cavernous room made his injuries all the more ghoulish, starkly limned against his skin. He looked like the world’s most convoluted Rorschach blot. 

The abused chest rose and fell painfully with the effort of each breath, but his respiration was shallow and steady.

Snake shook his head, amazed. 

“You sure are a pain in the ass,” he marveled, looking down at Liquid’s embattled face, his wide, pale eyes and defiant features- an organism struggling to survive, clawing at the coattails of existence with astonishing temerity.

Snake couldn’t help but be a little impressed by his genes.

“What are you going to do?” Hal’s voice, behind him, sounding small and uncertain.

“What did I do with the spiders?” Snake muttered. “I’m going to do what you should have done.”

Having calmed somewhat, Hal felt a stirring of indignation. “Excuse me if your brother wouldn’t fit in a rolled-up newspaper,” he retorted, snatching his glasses from his face and hastily wiping the lenses on his shirttail. They were branded with sweaty fingerprints. “I’m not a killer, Snake. You know that.”

“Yeah, well, if this-” he said, with a dismissive wave at Liquid, “is any indication, we both failed on that count.”

Hal shook his head. “I don’t get it. What about FOXDIE?”

“That’s hardly important at the moment.”

No sooner than he spoke, he felt a faint touch on his gun. Liquid’s fingers rested over the barrel, slack and punished, but still ambulatory.

“You…”

Snake stared as the word trickled thickly past full and unblemished lips- all that remained unsullied of the flawless, malevolent man he’d met at Shadow Moses. That distinctive accent, distorted by hoarseness, but unmistakable, nonetheless. A wracking cough, as Liquid fought doggedly to speak.

“…Who are you?”

There was a long moment where none of them said anything. Overhead, the pipes cried on, and subsonic to that was a soft rattling sound, like a fistful of small stones.

It wasn’t cold, but Liquid’s teeth were chattering.

At last, Snake pulled his gun back. Liquid’s fingers twitched, and he resisted, clung to that tenuous almost-contact they shared. But there wasn’t much resistance left in him.

“Cut the crap, Liquid,” Snake said. He extracted his gun and stepped back, leveling the weapon again. “You never did have the sense to stay down after a punch.”

Liquid reached for him again, pushing against the sides of the body bag, flexing and distorting it like a second skin. “Wait. I’m not dead. Don’t leave me here…”

“Snake…?” Otacon said tentatively, returning now after having slipped away long enough to grab Snake’s coat from the hook beside the door. He slipped it now, discreetly, over the man’s bare shoulders; it promptly slid off again, cascading down his damp back and falling heavily to the floor.

“You’re going to catch your death,” Otacon muttered. 

But Snake wasn’t paying any attention. He had let his gun fall a little, and was watching Liquid’s face intently. A startling distance had set in behind the man’s eyes, and looking into them had the same disorienting effect as standing on the edge of a high ridge over the ocean. He was looking at Snake, but at the same time right past him. Right past the far wall, past the city that lay beyond. At something a thousand miles away.

It was the look, Snake thought, of someone waiting for the beast to come and finish him off.

Otacon, meanwhile, had knelt – eyes squeezed tightly shut as he did so – and retrieved Snake’s coat from the floor. As he begun to slip it over his shoulders again, Snake stepped abruptly forward and the coat slumped back to the floorboards.

He turned the gun in his hand, thumbing the safety on, and slid his arms under Liquid’s body. One beneath his shoulders, the other his knees. This time, he bent like a reed, and Snake lifted him easily.

Liquid caught his breath sharply, between clenched teeth. “Hurts…” he whispered. “Asshole.”

Snake scowled. “I wasn’t counting on another mouth to feed. I ought to take you back to where I got you from.”

The shudder that passed through Liquid’s body was instantaneous and so violent Snake almost lost his hold. “No…” he whimpered. “Don’t take me back there. Kill me, but don’t take me back.”

“You’re awfully demanding for a dead man, Liquid.”

Liquid drew a choking breath, cloaked in a sob, and his head fell against Snake’s shoulder. He carried his brother, still mostly shrouded in the body bag, into the back of the warehouse, took him into the closest room – Otacon’s. 

The bed squeaked in protest as Snake dropped him to the mattress. He turned to Otacon, who had followed him sheepishly, still holding Snake’s coat out in front of him like an offering.

“Get some blankets,” Snake said. His voice was calm; he was utterly composed. “Make sure he gets warm. Also, try to get him to drink something.”

“Me?” Otacon stammered. “You want me, to… to…”

Snake rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he looked Liquid over. “He’s in shock. That’s the worst of it. He might pull through…”

“Snake…” Otacon chuckled nervously. “You, uh, almost sound like that’s what you want.”

“Just get him patched up, Hal.”

“Wait a second!” Snake turned to go, and Otacon backed away from the prone figure in his bed, pacing Snake to the door. “Just where are you going?”

“To put some pants on.”


	3. Chapter 3

In his second unexpected athletic coup of the night, Otacon dove for Snake’s retreating form, clutching his arm like an infant octopus.

“Wait,” he hissed. “You can’t leave me… with _him_.” He cast a nervous look over his shoulder at Liquid’s supine figure, reclined, broken on the bed. “What if he does something?”

Snake sighed, jerking his arm free with practiced technique. “Look at the guy, Otacon. He’s ground round. What’s he gonna do? Bleed on your Transformers sheets?”

“I don’t have…”

“Whatever,” muttered Snake from the other room.

Left alone. 

Left alone with Liquid Snake.

Otacon shuddered, forcing himself to turn, to smile weakly, in what he hoped was a reassuring manner.

Liquid was looking at him, not expectantly, not maliciously…just looking. His eyes were no longer as feverish as they had been when he first regained...whatever unorthodox noun best described this circumstance. They had settled, somewhat- resigned into a clouded, sonorous blue of shallow intimations, offering little insight into the state of the their owner’s perception.

“Ok,” Hal said, briskly, to mask his apprehension. “Warming up.”

Liquid didn’t say anything, so he nodded efficiently and went to the closet and grabbed all the blankets he could, mostly scavenged military issue. Snake collected them whenever he found them, out of habit. He also found one unopened Soviet-era Mylar cosmonaut space blanket, which was perfect under the circumstances.

As he opened the package, he couldn’t help having some misgivings, because it was clearly original stock from the days of the Red Curtain, and kind of a collector’s item. But then, Liquid was kind of a collector’s item too. Hal shuddered to think about the kind of collectors that might be in the market for a “fixer upper”.

The man lay motionless, drained, his eyes half-lidded. Otacon frowned, beginning to relax. It was fairly clear that Liquid had no strength in reserve.

Despite the trauma his body displayed, there was something almost compelling about the picture he created. Hal was a non-practicing Jew, but he remembered once being inside a Cathedral, the frescoes of the martyred saints and sinners, the juxtaposition of beautiful, anguished faces and unimaginable torment. He remembered Saint Sebastian, in particular, cut down for his ideals by the very men who made him a soldier, collapsed against a tree, his body riddled with slings and arrows.

But Sebastian had lived.

Not many people survived their own martyrdom.

Hal frowned, looking down at the strong lines of Liquid’s face, lines made no weaker by his state. Those eyes that struggled fiercely to remain open, to watch what was happening. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Liquid had the same control issues as Snake. Maybe he could put him at ease the same way, just keep a running narration of what was happening.

Hal shook out the blanket in all its flimsy, reflective glory, spreading it carefully over Liquid’s prone form. “This will reflect your own body heat back to you,” he informed Liquid, in the same tone he reserved for Snake over Codec- upbeat, blithe. “You’ll be warm in no time.”

He tucked in the edges of the blanket gently, so that Liquid wouldn’t wince. Hal didn’t like to be the cause of anyone’s pain. 

Liquid swallowed, and his throat clicked dryly. “Who did this to me?” he whispered.

Hal cocked his head with a cheerfully bemused smile. “You don’t know?” he asked conversationally, layering the conventional blankets over the shock blanket. Bundling Liquid’s hard form into a soft, obscure mass.

Liquid looked down at Hal’s hands, as they smoothed the covers over him. “Do you know me?” he asked, at last, confusion apparent in his tone.

Otacon paused, frowning. “Of course I know you,” he said. “Don’t you know me?”

Liquid shook his head, ever so slightly, to the negative. “Who am I?" he rasped.

Hal straightened, hesitating, unsure of what to say. “You’re Liquid,” he said.

Liquid’s eyes narrowed, amongst the bruises. “Is that some kind of joke?” he muttered. “About my physical state?”

“No,” said Hal. “Nothing like that. Liquid. That’s…your name.” He looked skeptical, thought Hal. Unconvinced. “You were raised in Africa,” he offered, lamely. 

Liquid closed his eyes.

“You need fluids,” Hal said, quickly, pointing at back toward the door. “I’ll just…” But Liquid was unresponsive, having slipped back into an uneasy sleep.

Hal ducked back into the spacious loft, crossing the living room, to the renovated corner kitchen. He got a pint glass from the cupboard and opened the freezer, pulling out a tray of ice cubes. He was hunched over, inverting the spine of the tray when Snake came up behind him.

“Otacon…what the hell are you doing?”

Hal jerked his head up. “Christ, Snake. Don’t you think I’ve had enough excitement today?”

“Did you get him all set?”

“You mean _your_ brother Liquid Snake?” 

Snake set his jaw. “Yeah,” he said, tersely.

“Working on it now,” Hal said, contorting the tray so that the last of the ice flipped into the glass.

Snake looked down. “What the hell…are you making him a fucking cocktail or what? He needs water, Otacon. Now.”

“I don’t want him to drink anything until we know the extent of his internal injuries,” snapped Otacon. “Didn’t they give you basic first-aid training in supersoldier school? Or is that just for babysitters?”

Snake blinked. “I…right. No, Hal. That makes a lot of sense.”

Otacon thrust the cup of ice at him. “Good. Then you can give him these chips of ice. Slowly. We want him to re-hydrate without bleeding out.”

Snake looked down quizzically at the cup in his fist.

Otacon paused before turning away. He sighed. “He doesn’t remember anything, Snake.”

"Is that the line he's using on you, Hal? I didn't think even he'd try something so pathetic..."

"I mean it," Otacon insisted. "I can tell just by looking at him. He doesn't even know what happened."

The corner of Snake's mouth twitched. "So he's a good actor. He such a drama queen, I'm not really surprised. You know, Hal, he's fooled more suspicious people than you, before."

Otacon snorted softly. "Fine, Dave. Do whatever you want." Though his tone didn’t change, the corners of his jaw were tense. "Just… don't make a mess of my room."

He turned on his heels, stomping back toward the main partition where his computers were set up. He'd be pouting for hours, Snake thought. Otacon was no drill sergeant, but when he was mad at you, he made sure you knew.

But Otacon was the least of his worries right now.

Snake headed back to the bedroom, held back in the hallway and peeked around the doorframe. It was just for a moment, just a glance, but he saw the whole room. Liquid wasn't moving. His eyes were closed, and the edges of the blankets were still smooth.

He hadn't moved.

Snake realized he had been holding his breath, and he let it out with a sigh that was deliberately loud. He didn't trust Liquid, but he was damned if he was going to creep around his own house like a criminal.

He stepped inside, boots ringing soundly on the hardwood floor, until he reached the little square patch of carpet that surrounded Otacon's bed. He pulled a chair over, sat the cup of ice Otacon had given to him on the nightstand. The chips of ice had begun to melt, and they slipped from between his fingers a few times before he managed to grab hold of one.

"Look, Liquid," Snake said as he lifted the ice carefully to his brother's parched lips. "I hope you don't think that this means I'm going to go easy on you. When you wake up…"

He trailed off as Liquid's eyes fluttered open.

Snake blinked. "Well, it's about time."

As the ice melted between his lips, Liquid's tongue flicked out, lapping the dampness from Snake's fingertips. "Thanks," he rasped.

"Shit…" Snake shook his head, and reached for another chip of ice. "Don't mention it."

Liquid tilted his head forward, lifting it weakly from the pillow so he could take the ice from Snake's fingers. "Who are you? You look familiar…"

"Yeah, right," Snake muttered. "That's a nice touch."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, cut the crap, Liquid. That amnesia bullshit isn't going to fly with me. We both know what you've done. You're going to pay for it."

Liquid shuddered. "Please, don't send me back to them."

His brother's eyes had grown distant for a moment, unfocused, and it made Snake hesitate before speaking again.

Liquid seemed to struggle, choking down a knot in the back of his throat. "You have to listen to me," he said. Though his voice was hoarse, he was laboring to make it calm and reasonable. "Listen," Liquid said. "I don't remember what happened. If I did something wrong, then I ought to go to the police, right? Not back to them."

"There's not a prison on earth that could hold you, Liquid."


	4. Chapter 4

"Can you tell me what hurts?"

"Everything. Everything fucking hurts, all right?"

Snake sighed, tossing the roll of gauze in his hand back into the first aid kit on the table. He slammed the lid and folded his arms over his chest. "Goddamnit, Liquid. Are you going to let me do this, or are you just going to whine all night?"

Otacon had spent the last quarter hour fluttering around the edges of the room, occasionally darting closer, only to retreat again as soon as it seemed that someone was about to look at him. He spoke up for the first time, though without leaving the sanctuary of the doorway to do it.

"Snake, behave yourself. Liquid's had a hard enough time without you…"

"Excuse me." Liquid pressed his palms against the mattress, sitting up in bed. He winced; the movement seemed to pain him. But neither of them reached to stop him. "I wish you wouldn't call me that," he said.

"What's wrong with 'Liquid'?" Snake asked, eyeing him warily. "That's your name, isn't it?"

Liquid turned to him. The set of his mouth was jaded and serious. "Well, I can't be certain, now can I? But seeing as "Liquid" isn't really a name, my guess would be…"

Snake rolled his eyes. "Hal!"

"What?"

"Will you… do something about this?"

"Oh, right, Snake. Let me just go get a hammer. I'm sure another knock on the head will set him right again. Just like in the cartoons, right?"

Snake shrugged. "It's worth a try, right? What's the worst that could happen?"

"He could _die_ , Snake! That's what could happen!"

"We won't hit him that hard."

Otacon rolled his eyes, the thick lenses of his glasses doing very little to hide his disgust. "It's called Second Impact Syndrome, Snake. It happens when a second injury to the head is sustained before the trauma from the first is completely healed, and…"

"Wait," Liquid said. "You're saying I have _head trauma_?"

"No," Snake said.

"Yes," Otacon said.

They exchanged a glance. A long, murderous glance.

"We don't know," Snake said at last.

"But all that rough treatment you gave him didn't help much, did it, Snake?"

"How do you know so much about it, anyway?" Snake said sharply.

"The internet," Otacon replied with a shrug. "It's amazing what a little Googling will turn up. Of course, I'm no expert, but I think what we're dealing with here is a case of what's called global amnesia. That's total memory loss. It's a defense mechanism that occurs to help the subject deal with extreme emotional trauma." He glanced at Liquid. "Does that sound about right?"

"I don't think he knows, Hal," Snake said.

They both turned to Liquid, who only shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sorry, but I don't know anything."

Snake sighed. "All right, I get it. So how do we reverse it? How do we… switch him back on? If we can't fix it by hitting him in the head, then I'm out of ideas."

"Um, Snake?" Otacon's eyes strayed to Liquid, and Snake thought there might have been a little residual fear in his wandering gaze. A little of the old terror that should have accompanied the sight of a half-naked Liquid Snake in one's bed.

All was right with the universe, Snake thought.

Except for the half-naked Liquid Snake in Otacon's bed, of course.

They would have to do something about that.

"Snake," Otacon said again. "Is it okay if I talk to you in the hall for a second?"

"What is it?" Snake said.

"Just for a second, okay?"

Snake glanced at his brother. The color had melted from Liquid's face; his blue eyes and lank yellow hair were Technicolor bright against his pallid complexion. 

"Why?" Liquid said. "What's wrong with me?"

Snake sighed. Otacon never had been any good at bad news. "It's all right," Snake said, standing up. "We'll just be a minute."

He went out into the hall, where Otacon was waiting.

"Snake," he said. His voice was little more than a whisper.

"For god's sake, Otacon. Don't be such a drama queen. In case you hadn't noticed, that's Liquid Snake in there. He can handle a little bad news."

Hell, Liquid had built an entire career on bad news.

"I know," Otacon said. "But I still don't think it's such a good idea to talk in front of him. Like he's not even there at all…"

"Why? What's wrong with him?"

Otacon shook his head. "I don't know exactly. He's the only one that knows. But he's messed up pretty bad, Snake. Can't you tell?"

"So he's got a little PTSD. Who doesn't? His memory will come back."

"It's not just his memory. Look at his eyes. He's scared. Can you remember ever seeing your brother scared of anything? Whatever happened, it got inside him. All the way to the bone."

Snake set his jaw against the words, and glared at Hal, wishing he could CQC him, just a little, just once. Just enough to tickle. “Otacon,” he bit out. “My so-called brother is a mercenary, and a loose cannon with the powder packed in ass-backwards. I don’t care if he never remembers his name, he’s the same guy inside.”

“He’s terrified,” stated Otacon quietly, almost defiantly. His arms were crossed over his perpetual lab coat, his head bowed slightly, eyes upraised.

“He’s sick in the head.”

“He’s injured. He’s alone, Snake. He doesn’t even know himself.”

Snake made a noise of marked displeasure. “Since when did you become president of the Liquid Snake Fan Club? Do you guys have the Thin Mints this year?”

Otacon shook his head, getting more agitated. “I’m not. I’m not. You know what I’m a fan of, Snake? Humanity. Humanism. Things…to do with…being human, or humane.” He paused, almost stuttering. “That…that thing in there, is a man, and that man is _your brother_.”

When Snake spoke, his voice was deadly quiet. “All right, Hal,” he said. “What do you want me to do about it?”

Otacon shook his head. “That’s a good question,” he mumbled, almost to himself. “What am I thinking? I’m thinking that you always handle everything. But you can’t handle this. Not with your skill set.”

“Hal,” said Snake, dangerously.

“Come on, Snake,” snapped Otacon. “It’s not like there’s a CQC stance for compassion.”

Snake grunted dismissively, but felt a little guilty at the mention of CQC. “With CQC, you don’t need compassion,” he muttered.

A soft cough came from the other room, the kind that bespoke injury. Liquid was trying not to disrupt himself, trying not to move overmuch.

He was an invalid.

Snake winced, but played it off as a scowl. “What’s wrong with him?” he demanded softly, harshly. 

Otacon was silent and noncommittal for several seconds, then at last he spoke. "You want to know what I think?”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.” Occasionally people found it amazing that Snake could articulate so well through a clenched and rigid jaw. Snake didn’t find it surprising. Practice was the key to every deed deemed impossible.

“There’s a phenomenon,” began Otacon, and he almost lost Snake there, but he forced himself to listen, because somewhere in the teeming mass of syllables to come, there was something that actually interested him. “Called PBT.”

“Go on,” said Snake, not exactly relishing the wind-up.

Otacon smirked and made a small sardonic salute. Snake wondered if he’d become too approachable. He found himself growing ever more nostalgic about the days when the sight of him could make Otacon jump into a locker and piss himself.

“The abbreviation stands for Political Betrayal Trauma. See, Snake, in Western society, citizens place a lot of trust in authority figures. When that trust is betrayed, it can be deeply traumatic. Apparently, it’s often co-morbid with PTSD, or mistaken for it.” 

Snake set his chin and shifted his eyes. “Apparently?” he asked, dubiously.

The engineer shrugged. “Internet.”

“Right.”

“The point is, someone can have either, or they can have both. But whereas PTSD is caused by extreme fear…PBT is triggered by rage. Extreme, untenable anger.”

Snake stared, eyes narrowing. “Let me get this straight, Hal. You’re saying Liquid _angsted_ himself into oblivion.”

Otacon’s eyes narrowed right back. “I’m saying someone else did.”

A pause, and Snake was aware of Liquid’s rapid, shallow breathing, carried around the corner to them on the wings of silence. Could Liquid hear them? The loft was resonant, but they’d been keeping their voices low…

Snake snorted. What the hell did he care if Liquid heard?

Hal was gazing after the sound, his expression suggesting that his thought traveled the same path as Snake’s had, before he’d come to his senses. “And whoever did it, they’re at least as bad as Liquid,” he said, very softly.

“Let’s get back in there,” Snake muttered. “See if we can shake loose some of those memories, see what we’re dealing with.”

Hal frowned at his choice of words.

“It’s a figure of speech,” he muttered. He wasn’t a rocket surgeon, but sometimes he resented Otacon’s assumptions that whatever the lowest common denominator was, he was functioning at it. No doubt Otacon was picturing him shaking Liquid’s limply battered body like a rat terrier, grunting in frustration like the apes beating bones in 2001. Light years away from rational thought.

“I know,” Hal said, quickly. “I’m sorry. I was just…thinking.”

They both had a suspicion, he knew, that neither of them wanted to voice aloud. He moved, more pushing than following Hal, who more shuffled than led, and they re-entered the room. Hal had a ludicrously bright smile plastered across his unassuming face, something like you’d give a lunatic child before graciously trusting him with a pair of plastic tipped scissors.

“All righty, Liquid,” he said. “Here’s the deal.”

“According to Wikipedia Emmerich, here,” Snake drawled.

“Can I have a nickname too, if you’re handing them out?” muttered Liquid. “Preferably something slightly less insipid than a generic noun?”

“Huh,” said Snake. Liquid had sounded almost Australian for a moment. Snake chalked it up to lethargy.

"Actually," Otacon said. "Liquid is an adjective in this case. It's your last name--"

"Hal!" Snake said sharply.

"Right. Sorry."

Otacon looked uncertain for a moment, then pulled up a chair alongside the bed, a convention no doubt cemented in his teenaged brain by late-night viewings of M*A*S*H* as an essential bedside mannerism. Then he took a seat, leaning forward, but not too far.

Snake didn’t blame him. A wounded tiger was still a tiger after all. And a healthy, fluffy bunny…was still Otacon.

“We think,” Otacon said, glaring at Snake and daring him to disagree, “That you have some psychological trauma, apart from the…obvious…physical distress,” he finished, uncomfortably.

Liquid looked at Hal with lucid blue eyes, silent, venturing nothing, so Snake nudged him.

“All right, Hal. Get on with it.”

“More specifically, we think…that you have Political Betrayal Trauma, along with a little PTSD, that resulted in a case of global amnesia…meaning, you’ve forgotten everything.” Otacon paused, wagging his finger at nothing particular. “Although…I’m not _convinced_ about the PTSD. I was telling Snake that PTSD is fear-based, and you…well, you’re a sociopath,” he added, awkwardly. “Pretty much, anyway. Right? I mean, you don’t…feel fear.”

In the adjacent moment, both Snake and Otacon found themselves looking at Liquid expectantly.

Liquid’s brows rose swiftly in a sardonic gesture that must have cost him two waking hours, by the suppressed wince that followed. “You’re crazy,” he said. “I’m not answering that.”

The vivid blue around his eyes was beginning to fade and augment as it healed, leaving a striking palette of greens and purples and yellows and reds intermittent. Reminiscent of elaborate New Wave fantasy makeup, circa 1983. He looked like an extra from _Liquid Sky_.

He looked kinda good, if you liked beat-up men with good bone structure and strong, muscular bodies made kitten-weak. There had to be a niche for that. People dug amputees, after all…and weirder shit; Snake had seen that website Otacon had up that one time, the one he’d clicked off with a Revolver Ocelot-like speed. Someone would dig Liquid, a big dumb mercenary, humbled and broken and lost, with the renegade glint not quite extinguished from unfamiliar eyes, and the arrogant tilt of the jaw remaining, inherent, party favors from another life.

Someone, thought Snake, swallowing, wondering why his throat was so dry lately.

Liquid was looking at Otacon, with weary insolence. “Why do you wear that lab coat around?” he drawled. “You’re not a scientist.”

“I’m…an engineer,” said Otacon, surprised. “They’re almost the same thing.”

Liquid smiled and closed his eyes, snorting softly. “Only an _engineer_ would say that.”

Hal’s mouth dropped open, indignant, as if he would protest, but Snake put his hand on his partner’s shoulder, pressing down firmly. “We need to find out what they did to you, Liquid. What made you lose your long term recall,” he said, tersely. “You remember some of it. I know you do. When I carried you in here, you begged me not to make you go ‘back to them’.”

Liquid shook his head. "I don't remember that, either."

"What a surprise," Snake sighed.

"Look, Liquid…" Otacon began, reasonably.

"I told you not to call me that. That's not my name."

"Fine. Look… whoever you are. We're trying to help you. If you don't tell us what you do remember, then it could cause real lasting damage. You might never get yourself back."

"Maybe I don't want myself back," Liquid said. "You two seem to think I'm some kind of evil genius. Well, right now I don't feel particularly evil or genius. So maybe I ought to stay this way."

"I never said you were a genius," Snake muttered.

"Do you _mind_?" Otacon said. "Snake, if you're not going to help…"

"I am helping," Snake said. "Look, Hal, he's made up his mind. He was trained not to crack under even the most intense interrogations. He's not going to tell either of us anything if he doesn't want to."

"I don't know…" Otacon said.

"Well, I do. I'll let you be the expert on abnormal psychology if I can be the expert on this, okay?"

Otacon nodded slightly, and stood up. His eyes never left Liquid's battered face, until Snake's hand came down on his shoulder. Guiding him away, steering him towards the door.

He waited until Otacon was gone before speaking.

"Liquid." He raised his hand, halting his brother when he opened his mouth to speak. "No. Liquid. That's your name, whether you like it or not. Liquid-fucking-Snake. You've never owned up to a single thing in your life, but I'm not going to let you get away with denying this, too."

Liquid nodded. "All right," he said. And all the strength his voice had gained over the past hour, all the defiance that had leaked back into his eyes, was gone. "I'm sorry," Liquid said quietly. "Don't be angry."

Snake was baffled by the sudden change in demeanor, but he couldn't figure out what had caused it. He didn't know what frightened someone like Liquid. He couldn't even begin to guess what memories lived beneath this man's skin.

He was not his brother's keeper.

"Just… get some rest, okay? You look like shit."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to go. Shutting the door behind himself.


	5. Chapter 5

Things changed little, and Liquid gave up no insight. Otacon insisted that was because he had nothing to give. Snake refused to endorse that perspective. He’d known Liquid briefly and well. Liquid had plenty to give up, but he’d part with it when he was damned good and ready.

No use getting all worked up to watch paint dry.

On Tuesday afternoon, Liquid felt well enough to get up for an hour and sit on the couch. He slept for the rest of the day. After a few more days, he could stand with some autonomy, provided there was a place to rest his hand. He still couldn’t walk on his own, and needed to be supported, much to Snake’s clench-jawed chagrin. Despite his steps toward a minor recovery, he was prone to collapsing, or losing consciousness at the drop of a hat. Vertigo seemed to plague him. He still couldn’t be trusted to stand on his own indefinitely, and that was how Snake wound up watching Liquid Snake shower.

Snake leaned against the bathroom wall, averting his eyes, and concentrating on the sound of the spattering water. 

The shower had formerly been an industrial one, before they had converted the loft, and there was no clear delineation between shower and room. The drain was located in the floor a few feet away from where Snake dutifully waited, in the event that Liquid should decide to bite the tile.

He seemed all right, thought Snake, grudgingly affording a glance. With his head ducked under the spray, Liquid seemed almost unaware of him, bracing himself against the wall and leaning onto his hand.

The weight made his bruised bicep flex noticeably.

“Shampoo’s on the right,” Snake muttered. “Soap in the dish.”

Liquid nodded almost imperceptibly, eyes closed. 

Steam and silence.

“…Conditioner?” he said, after a few moments.

Snake scowled. “Otacon’s," he said reluctantly. “Bottom left.”

After a moment, Liquid opened his eyes, wincing as he turned to grasp the shampoo and the punishing water shifted over new bruises.

“You all right?” demanded Snake, wanting a heads-up if Liquid decided to keel.

“…Yeah,” Liquid averred, tight-lipped.

Clearly hesitant to move his supporting hand from the tile, the shampoo bottle gave him momentary pause. Liquid managed to uncap the bottle with his teeth, and Snake wondered if he should have intervened. Looked like he had it handled now.

Snake resumed his semi-vigilant pose. Liquid didn’t seem put out at his hands-off approach. Snake wouldn’t have wanted anyone’s help in his position.

Not that he was anything like Liquid.

He grew tired of staring at sterile tile pretty quickly, and reluctantly returned to looking at the only other thing in the room.

“Get an eyeful,” said Liquid faintly, without turning. He was slowly lathering his hair, painstakingly, with stiff movements, nothing like the gracefully bombastic super-soldier Snake remembered from his nightmares. “I must look like ground round.” He flinched a little at the sting of the soap, and his lip curled briefly.

Snake tasted copper, remembering the feeling of his own past wounds, the raw sting of warm water, both soothing and agonizing. “You look better than you did.”

Liquid snorted softly. It might have been a laugh, but Snake couldn’t tell for sure. “I shouldn’t be alive, should I?”

“I’m not a good person to ask,” grunted Snake, unwittingly watching tendrils of soap twine around Liquid’s strong, battered thighs and down the curve of his calves. “If I had my choice, you wouldn’t be.”

Liquid blew the water from his face weakly and smoothed it semi-dry with broad, bruised hands, turning, at last, to look at him. His blue eyes were guarded, wary. But beneath that, there was a strange contrition.

“What did I do to you?” he asked, quietly.

Snake narrowed his eyes. “That doesn’t matter now.”

“You’re my brother. I heard your friend…Hal…say that. Did we grow up together?”

Snake set his jaw and looked away. “No,” he said, tightly. “And we don’t need to talk about that. Our being brothers never made a goddamned difference to anything. We might as well have been strangers.”

“We are now,” said Liquid, hesitantly, dropping his eyes, as his fingers slowly chased the suds over the tender skin of his chest.

“You’re no stranger to me, Liquid,” said Snake, harshly. “I know you all too well.”

"Well, congratu-fucking-lations," Liquid muttered. "Do you want a medal for that little achievement?"

"Are you going to finish in there already? Or are you just going to use all our hot water?"

"Sure," Liquid said quietly. "I'm almost done."

He turned away. A sharp movement that would have, under more arid conditions, caused his hair to swing in a dramatic pendulum arc across his back. As things were, the wet golden tendrils clung, stationary, to his back and shoulders, like cracks worn into smooth marble.

Facing the far wall, Liquid hesitated. His spine was straight, head thrown back a little, feet slightly apart. He would have cut a hell of an imposing figure, Snake thought, if he hadn't needed to brace himself against the concrete.

When he didn't move for a long moment, Snake's expression shifted minutely, into something that approximated a scowl.

"Liquid!" he said sharply. Hoping to wake him.

The tremor began in Liquid's calves, and slid upward. A faint vibration of muscle, a tremor beneath the skin, like a steel string after it's been plucked.

Snake noticed it just as it reached Liquid's thighs.

And he moved without thinking. Years of experience had taught him to know an injured man when he saw one, but that wasn't what he was thinking of now. As he ducked forward, arms extended in front of him.

The mind wasn't always quick enough, but the body knew when it needed to move.

Liquid's knees unhinged. He made one weak grab for the showerhead, but came up short. His hand slid along the wall as he fell, cutting a trail through the sheen of water.

Snake caught him around the waist with one arm, dropping to his knee as Liquid landed full against his chest.

He sagged to the side so his body rested against Snake's thigh. One leg was stretched out straight in front of him, the other bent beneath him at an awkward angle.

His eyes were open, but unfocused.

"Hey!" Snake said.

Rivulets of water raced down Liquid's face. Fresh droplets hit his skin, and sprang away.

Snake realized for the first time that catching Liquid as he fell had brought him directly under the stream of water from the tap. He was soaked through his clothes, all the way to the skin.

With a sigh, he lifted his hand to shield Liquid's eyes.

"What…?"

Liquid blinked, and tried a few times to lift his head before he finally managed it. His blue gaze slid into focus, and it drifted slowly over his surroundings, as viewed from this new and unfamiliar angle.

"Sorry," he murmured. "Shit… Was I out for very long?"

Snake felt his eyes narrow, and his jaw hardened. “Nah,” he said at last. “Just a wink or two. What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Liquid, closing his eyes briefly. “I just lost…equilibrium.”

The water was warm, coursing over Dave’s back, and the clinging of his drenched clothing was strange but not really unpleasant, so long as he stayed under the spray. Getting out, he knew, would bring the three C’s of saturated attire- clammy, clingy and cold.

“Just breathe for a sec, Liquid. You’re all right. You’re pushing yourself.”

Liquid looked at him wanly, a small, oddly bitter smile on his lips. “Is there any other way to succeed…brother?”

Snake hastily averted his gaze, his features reforming into a snarl. “Don’t ever call me that.”

Liquid’s blue eyes sought his own fiercely. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? If I have to be Liquid-fucking-Snake, then I’m not letting you get away with denying anything, either.”

“I’m not denying anything.”

“The way you jumped in like that,” said Liquid, quietly stubborn. “It proves it. You know I’m your flesh and blood.”

Just like Liquid to segue like that, subverting utter helplessness into power games. He was the same man inside, thought Snake, glowering.

“I know that I’m stuck with you, and that I have to make the best of it. I need to keep Hal happy, and that means making certain allowances. You’re one of those allowances. You’re here because Hal wants you here. Because of Hal’s goddamn hemorrhaging heart. So don’t assign me any charitable intentions, Liquid.”

“I would never,” murmured Liquid, looking away, grimacing. “But you moved so very quickly, brother. I thought, perhaps…” He trailed off, shifting slightly, wincing as he did. 

Snake was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how naked Liquid was, sprawled unselfconsciously on the concrete. His muscles were slick and hard, coated with water vapor and the vestiges of soap that clung to the carved angles like hot frost.

Snake’s brow furrowed, and his face contorted. “Now you listen. I’m not taking any happy family bullshit from you, or anyone else.”

The hair that obscured the prone man’s eyes struck a special blue gong of fury in Snake’s subconscious. Liquid’s fucking lion’s mane, fucking Samson in the shower, a lucky immortality, faltering but never falling. Unkillable. That fucking hair.

He seized Liquid’s head and shoved back the wayward locks of water-darkened gold, exposing his eyes, wide and haunted.

“Look at me, and read my lips, Liquid. Whatever you call me, it doesn’t mean anything. No one cares about you. Not even Hal. No one would miss you if we threw you out with the trash.” 

Liquid’s mouth began to shudder violently, and Snake’s face twisted, incredulous.

“What the fuck--”

Liquid made a little sound in the back of his throat, a dry click, like the noise antiquated analogue machinery might make. He shuddered once in Snake's grip, and then the pressure against his arm was abruptly released.

So fast and fluid were his next movements, that, caught unaware, Snake was unable to track them.

A hand closed around his throat. Liquid rolled forward onto his knees, one of his bare legs dragging across the raw concrete, leaving a smear of blood behind.

"Don't touch me!"

Liquid shoved him back, out from under the water and across the floor. Snake hit the wall with his shoulder, and his head rung like a bell. There was a moment of breathless vertigo. His vision slid out of focus, but his hands were already around Liquid's wrists, prying his hands off.

"You fucking psycho…" Snake hissed, as soon as he could breathe again.

He could hear Liquid's shattered breath, louder even than the drumming of water. Snake dug in one knee, flipping Liquid onto his back. He gasped when his shoulder blades hit the tile, and arched his back, struggling against Snake's grip.

"Don't… Don’t…"

Each word was punctuated by a sharp gasp. Liquid dug in his heels, tried to squirm away, and so Snake swung a knee over his body, sitting astride his hips.

"Liquid!" he snapped. "Jesus, look at yourself. What do you think you're doing?"

But one look at Liquid's twisted expression was enough to inform Snake that his brother was in no condition to answer that.

Liquid's eyes were half-hooded behind yellow lashes, rolling back so that Snake saw nothing but the whites. He trembled violently, twitching in weak, abortive attempts to break free.

"Jesus…" Snake said again, quietly.

Liquid lifted his head as far as the weight pressing down on him would allow. Lifted it, and then slammed it abruptly back into the concrete floor. The dull sound rang off the walls, and Solid felt the impact tremor all the way up his arms.

Liquid uttered a sharp, startled cry. But already he was lifting his head again, falling back again.

"Damnit, Liquid, cut it out!" Snake growled. He hadn't gone to all this trouble getting Liquid back on his feet just to let the man knock himself into another coma.

He shifted forward, trying to hold Liquid down with the weight of his body. Liquid had changed, he thought. Weakened. Before, his own strength had been different from Liquid's, but equal. Like two sides of the same well-physiqued coin.

Now Snake pinned him down easily, resting over his brother until his back was pressed flat against the floor.

If Liquid noticed, he made no indication. He continued to bend his head forward and let it fall; each time it struck the tile, a wordless cry broke from his lips. 

Snake had leaned forward so far that by now those cries, along with Liquid's ragged breathing, spilled into his ear. And he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"Stop that," he said. "Liquid, stop…"

But he didn't think Liquid was listening anymore, and Snake was running out of body with which to pin him down.

The next time Liquid lifted his head, there was a smear of crimson on the concrete floor.

Snake set his jaw, and before he could change his mind, he slid forward and clamped his mouth over Liquid's in a rough, biting kiss. Forcing his head back to the floor and trapping him there.

He had hoped to shock Liquid back to his senses. Snake was pretty damn shocked at himself. 

But Liquid's eyes stayed unfocused and hazy. And he didn't seem particularly surprised. His lips even parted slightly, as though he had been expecting it.

He shuddered once in Snake's grip, and then was still.

Snake pulled away. It didn't escape his notice that he could taste Liquid's damp hair on his tongue.

"Liquid?" he said quietly.

"No more…" The words were just a whisper. Snake was still close enough that they cooled on the damp skin of his cheek.

"Liquid, it's okay. Just calm down."

"No more…" he murmured again. "No more wires."

Liquid relaxed abruptly, and his eyes slid closed. But the lines around his eyes were deep as fissures, and Snake new that his sleep was far from restful.

Snake pushed back to his knees, swiping the back of his hand over his lips. He still knelt over Liquid's body, and be could feel the heat of his brother's skin even through his clothes.

"You sure know how to make an exit, don't you?" he said quietly, and then sighed.

Now there was only the question of how the hell he was going to explain this to Otacon.


	6. Chapter 6

An hour later Snake was dryer, and wiser. He was sitting in the dark, clad in old-fashioned waffle welt long johns, rubbing a hand absently through his hair, as if trying to chase the last traces of dampness from his reality.

Otacon arrived in the freight elevator with the clattering of the old metal gates, holding a bag of groceries in a two-armed deathgrip. "Hey, Dave," he chirped.

"Where have you been?" muttered Snake, not really caring.

Otacon didn't seem to notice his preoccupation; either that or he was so used to Snake's noncommittal attitudes that he just plunged right on in. "I swung by Uwajimaya! And guess what? I got stuff for Nabeyaki Udon, Snake." He set his burden on the freestanding kitchen counter, and began pulling out various brightly colored packages with cartoons on them, as well as a variety of suspicious looking mushrooms. "Doesn't that sound great?"

Snake grunted.

Hal glanced toward the bedroom. "I thought that would be ok for Liquid...you know...warm nourishing soup." When Snake didn't reply, he came around in front of him. "Hey. How is our patient, anyway?"

"Before you go in there," muttered Snake, "maybe you should slam some Saki…or… Pocky, or whatever that shit is called."

Otacon frowned, bemused, hazel eyes wide and unassuming behind the transparent shields of his glasses. He grabbed one of the chairs from the computer desk, spinning it around so it faced Snake. The springs squeaked harshly when he sat down.

All of Otacon's fucking chairs squeaked. They must have been rusted all to hell by now, Snake thought, he had spilled enough of that shitty generic soda he was always drinking on them. Snake had never seen a man spill as much soda as Otacon did. Sometimes it seemed like he spilled more than he drank. He was all graceless elbows and ungainly hands. Knees cramped into spaces that were too small.

That, and the squeaky chairs.

"Is everything okay, Dave?" he asked, when Snake didn't acknowledge him immediately.

He had nearly forgotten, Otacon was that, too. That nagging little Jiminy Cricket voice, reminding him, regular as clockwork, that, no, things weren't okay.

Nothing was fucking okay.

"Everything's fine," Snake said.

Otacon was quiet for a moment, nodding, then tried again, with the solicitous patronage of June cornering the Beaver. "Snaaake," he asked, sighing. "Did something happen with Liquid?"

"You could say that," Snake said. "Earlier, he kind of… freaked out a little bit."

"Freaked out?"

"You heard me."

"Snake, this isn't _Reefer Madness_. He didn't just 'freak out'. Now tell me what happened."

Snake glowered, wishing for a smoke, but he doubted Otacon had remembered to pick any up at the Happy Japan Fun Palace, or whatever the hell he'd called it. If he had, they'd probably be covered in jiggly little doodles, and he wouldn't be able to smoke them anyway. That shit was worse than carcinogens. Better he died of black lung than sugar shock.

"You forgot my cigarettes, didn't you?" he muttered.

"Snake," Hal said, wagging his finger warningly. "Nix on the red herrings. Tell me what the hell you did to Liquid."

Snake's eyebrows shot upward. "What I did?" he growled. "I didn't do anything but try to break that bastard's fall, keep him from eating pavement."

It hadn't been his fault Liquid had looped the loop.

Or had it? Snake felt a creeping feeling of uneasy doubt.

"No?" Otacon said. "Then why are you getting so defensive?" He leaned closer, setting a hand on Snake's knee. "Listen… I'm just asking what happened. The more we know, the quicker we can figure out what's going on in his head."

Snake opened his mouth to reply, and Otacon hurried to finish speaking. "And, Snake, the quicker we find out what happened, the sooner we can find somewhere for him that's not here. Right?"

Snake sighed again. "I guess so," he muttered, but he hesitated before speaking. Trying to find the least compromising way of explaining what had happened. "It was a couple of hours ago. He got dizzy or something and keeled over. I tried to help him and he jumped me." Snake pointed to the bruises that ringed his throat, pale and unobtrusive enough that Otacon had to lean closer before he could make them out.

"Jesus, Snake. Don't tell me you…"

"I didn't hurt him," Snake said immediately. But then he looked away. "At least… I didn't hit him or anything."

Hal exhaled slowly, and slumped back in his chair. His floppy mane hung in his face, only serving to exacerbate the obvious. Otacon was dejected. "Well...well..." he began, helplessly. "...Look, there must have been something. There's always something. Even animals don't attack unprovoked. Whether there's a threat or not, they at least think they're in danger."

Snake made a doubtful noise. "I had just saved him, Hal."

"Maybe he interpreted it wrong. He was vulnerable, right? Naked?"

Snake's tongue caught in his throat for a moment. "Yeah," he managed, awkwardly.

"Well, what was the last thing you remember doing before he flipped out, as you say?"

"I didn't say 'flipped out'," muttered Snake. "I wouldn't say that."

"Come on, Snake," Otacon said. "Would you just try to think?"

"Sure," Snake said. "Whatever you say." He wanted to tell Otacon that it was hard to think without a cigarette, but one glance at the man's face made him think better of it. "I guess… I touched his face."

"His face?" Otacon echoed.

"Yeah," Snake said. "I couldn't see his eyes, so I pushed his hair back a little. And then he just turned on me. I fought him off, and I tried to get him to calm down…"

"You mean you pinned him down."

"I didn't want him to hurt himself. He was thrashing around like he was going to break every bone in his fucking body."

Otacon's eyes widened. "Really?"

Snake looked up, annoyed. "Yeah, really. What, do you think I'm just making shit up to impress you? Christ, Hal."

"Well, no, I just...he was obviously having a flashback of some kind...triggered, triggered by that motion-" Hal pantomimed the act of stroking a brow. "It must have touched off something, sparked some damage, like a bad trip." He shrugged. "And then you got the brunt."

Snake scowled fiercely. "Well, that's just great. So there's no telling what'll set off Liquid Nitrogen."

But Otacon was looking thoughtful, absently intent. "Snake," he said suddenly, "If you can, try to remember what he said afterwards, if anything. Did he yell out anything, call you any names?"

Snake was about to shake his head, but he paused, with his head cocked a little to the side. His lips tightened. "Yeah. He said… 'No more.' "

"That's… not much help," Otacon conceded.

"No more… wires." Snake looked up, hoping to see a flicker of recognition in Otacon's eyes.

Hal frowned, rubbing his fingers over the slight stubble of his cheek. "That doesn't make a lot of sense right off, does it?" he remarked, brow furrowing.

Snake rolled his eyes and sat back to watch Otacon think. Hal loved puzzles. He loved Su-do-ku, he loved chess. Hell, he even loved organizing the spice rack.

"It's kind of creepy, isn't it?" he said, after a moment, looking up. "Kinda gets you...right here," he added, poking Snake in the chest.

Snake looked down at the invading finger, unimpressed.

"I'll tell you what it sounds like to me," said Otacon, as if Snake had responded, as if they were having a normal, civilized exchange between cohesive humans, instead of the stilted verbal fumblings of a socially maladroit computer scientist and a genetically emotionally stunted ex-mercenary. "It sounds like he was hooked up to something."

Snake frowned. "Like what?"

Hal shook his head slowly. "Who knows? Electricity, machines, live surgery. Strung up by the wrists with piano filament. Could be anything."

Snake rolled his eyes. "Hal, for all we know he had a childhood dream of being a circus acrobat. That kind of speculation is fine when you're talking about the season finale of Lost, but real life doesn't work that way. Real life never works out the way you think it should."

Otacon straightened in his chair, as though personally offended. "A little scientific curiosity never hurt anyone, you know."

"Yeah?" Snake said. "Why don't you try telling that to my brother in there? Because I don't know what that lab they were keeping him in was for, but it wasn't a posh day spa--" He broke off, realizing that Otacon's expression had changed. "Hal, what the fuck are you staring at?"

"Nothing." Otacon shook his head. "Nothing, really. It's just…"

"What?"

"Well… you called him your brother. You've never done that before."

Snake's jaw clenched and his fist tightened. "What about it?" he asked, in a low, ominous tone.

It was his business tone, his brass-tacks tone, all the things that said he was not a man to be trifled with, that any straw applied might very well be the dromedarian backbreaker. The tone that Otacon now blithely ignored, with the privilege of a man who has seen the paper tiger in its origami savannah, and had no qualms about shooing it with a match.

"Nothing," he said, with a vaguely crooked smile. "But whatever brought about this change of semantic is beyond me. Is there something you're not telling me, Snake?"

And they were back to June Cleaver, just like that.

Snake groaned. The back of his eyes felt hot and his cheeks flamed with the memory of the other thing, the thing that had transpired almost too quickly to be logged by time.

But it had, hadn't it.

When he looked up, Otacon was studying him, like a slice of tissue under glass. Usually that stare only annoyed him, but this time Snake turned away. Turned away…like a man with something to hide. When he looked back, Otacon was no longer watching him. His gaze had drifted to the doorway behind him, the hallway that led back to the bedrooms.

A quiet cough made Snake whirl around in his chair, reaching for the gun at his hip.

Liquid stood silhouetted by the hall light, one hand clutching the doorframe, the other dug into the pocket of the gray bathrobe he was wearing. His head was down, and Snake couldn't see his eyes.

"What are you doing?" Otacon brushed past him, reminding Snake to move again. They both stepped forward at once, both reached for Liquid's arm… But only Snake drew back before they touched.

"You shouldn't be out of bed," Otacon chided. "You don't look so good."

"I really needed something to drink." Liquid's voice was a harsh, dry whisper, like leaves crushed underfoot.

"Snake. Do you mind…?"

Snake's eyes narrowed, but he turned toward the kitchen without a word. Liquid needed fucking water. With his luck, he'd choke on it and die. Well, one thing was for certain, Snake wasn't about to be the one to perform mouth-to-mouth on him.

Otacon was feather-clucking around Liquid, around Liquid-fucking-Snake, when Snake came back, glass of water clutched in his fist.

"You shouldn't be standing. Sit here," Hal admonished, easing Liquid into Snake's favorite chair.

Liquid nodded vaguely, as if to appease Hal.

Snake scowled. "Your water, your highness," he muttered, thrusting the cup into Liquid's hand.

Liquid's eyes rose to meet his, his face impassive, enigmatic. "Thank you...Snake," he said, deliberately. "I thank you...My lips thank you."

Snake's brows veered into an incredulous line. Though Liquid's voice was faint, he was almost certain he could catch hints of wry amusement. Or was it all in his head?

Otacon crouched beside the chair. "How are you feeling now?" he asked, hesitantly. "I heard...you had a bit of a setback, in the shower. Or...or do you even remember?"

Liquid paused, and his eyes gazed past them.

"I'm afraid," he said, "that I'm beginning to remember all too well."


	7. Chapter 7

"So you remember. What do you want, a fucking medal, Liquid?"

Snake knew he had said it too quickly, too defensively. He couldn't help it; Liquid always put him on the defensive. And this might have been a kinder, gentler, more pathetic Liquid Snake, but that didn't mean he had been declawed entirely. The man that Snake remembered wasn't afraid to fight dirty; after Shadow Moses, Snake had had the bruised balls to prove it. 

And Liquid would be more than pleased to make that... not a kiss, not by a long shot. That collision of lips they had shared earlier public knowledge, as long as he thought it would give him the edge.

It would be a hell of a thing to explain to Otacon.

There was a lot he couldn't understand about Liquid Snake.

As if eager to prove that very point, Otacon pistoned an elbow back into Snake's ribs. "Let him talk, Dave." He set a hand on Liquid's elbow. "Go ahead. We're listening."

Liquid’s eyes were shadowed with fatigue and fading bruises. “I was in a lab. An operating theatre room, with a sodium light. It was harsh, unflinching.” He coughed, raising a hand to his mouth reflexively. “It had a stainless steel table.”

Snake felt a pang of ill ease at those strong hands, reformed by circumstance into child-weak human clay. Like bread that had squished back into dough. Out of sight, he clenched his own, as if to reassure himself of their power.

Liquid paused. “A table. With gutters. Like they use for autopsy.”

Snake made a face, involuntarily, but Liquid’s gaze had drifted, fixed on the wall as he rubbed his jaw, slowly, looking almost robotic in his recounting.

Hal’s eyes were wide and haunted behind his glasses. “What kind of lab uses morgue furniture?” he blurted out, cringing. Whether it was in prescient anticipation of the look Snake shot him, or merely a response to the image Liquid’s spare words conjured, it was clearly not a willed expression.

After a moment, Liquid nodded, almost to himself. “I wondered that myself, in the first moments of my consciousness. The correct answer, of course, is usually the most obvious. It was a morgue…of sorts.”

Snake grunted. “You were dead. At least, we tried to make damn sure you were.”

“Dave!” Otacon was mollycoddling again. He glanced anxiously at Liquid, who was looking at them without emotion.

“It’s all right,” he said, evenly, shrugging without taking his eyes from Snake. “It explains the morgue jewelry I found on my wrist and toe.”

Snake scowled and looked away. “You obviously weren’t dead enough.”

Liquid smirked colorlessly. “That’s just it, brother. I think…that I was.”

Otacon was sitting so far forward on his rolling computer chair that it slipped backward on the wide planked wood and right out from under him, depositing him unceremoniously on the hard floor and sailing across the room, leaving a divot in the far wall.

Snake closed his eyes.

Otacon crossed his legs meekly, and stayed where he was, Indian-style on the ground.

“Are you all right? Should I continue?” asked Liquid, delicately.

“Yes,” muttered Snake. “No need to stop. That was nothing unusual in our house.”

Liquid’s gaze went distant and hazy once more. “The table had a unique feature. A remarkable capability. It tilted, upright. It could rotate entirely, so that it was upside down. It could be secured at any angle.” He made a slight face of confusion. “The blood still ran down the gutters,” he added, haltingly. 

“Blood,” said Snake, scowling. “Are you sure?”

“The smell of rancid copper. And that laughing, the clinking of metal.” Liquid whispered, his voice dipping into a low, dark place. “He pushed my hair back, so that I couldn’t hide my eyes.”

“Who?” Otacon asked. His voice was a dry whisper.

He was nervous, Snake realized. As afraid of hearing Liquid’s story as Liquid was of telling it. Snake knew his expression well, it was the same brand of harried anticipation that was stamped around his eyes during a particularly tense moment in a slasher movie. But Snake knew that this wouldn’t be over as soon as the axe came down.

He reached out, setting his hand over Liquid’s. An awkward, tentative touch. When it came to comfort, Snake knew he still needed some work. But he was getting better.

Liquid’s eyes darted to his face, suspicious. His jaw was loose, lips slightly parted, but he made no effort to speak.

“It’s okay,” Snake said. “Just… whenever you’re ready.”

Liquid nodded faintly; his eyes never left Snake's face. He was looking for something, Snake thought, expecting something. But he was damned if he knew what that was.

"I… don't remember who he was," Liquid said. "If he said his name, or what his face looked like. But he knew me. He said… he'd wanted to do this for a long time. That he was glad we finally had some time alone. He did… things to me."

"Things?" Otacon squeaked, before Snake could warn him not to.

"Things." Liquid pulled away, folded in on himself. He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around them. "I didn't like them."

Snake stared, knowing his face wore a slack grimace of disgust. “What the hell is this?” he growled, suddenly furious. “I know you’re a better actor than this, Liquid. The victimized body language is a bit much. You’re acting like a little girl, for fuck’s sake.”

Liquid looked up, eyes wide and hectic. “You don’t know,” he breathed, “you don’t know anything. You don’t know what he did.”

Otacon’s brows drew inward. “What did he do, Liquid? Don’t listen to Dave. He’s got plenty of things to work through himself,” he added, looking sidewise at Snake.

Snake blinked at the pointed tone. It was uncharacteristic of Hal. “You’re buying this?” he demanded. “I know they did something to him, but he’s had worse, I guarantee it- do you remember what the body looked like after Shadow Moses?”

“Shut up, Dave,” muttered Otacon. “You’re not helping us.”

Liquid looked up, slowly, studying Snake’s face with that same haunted expression. “The body,” he said, slowly. “And that was me, wasn’t it? I was dead.”

“I made sure of it,” spat Snake, glaring back at him with narrowed eyes.

Liquid closed his eyes. “At least you had enough decency to do that. He was not interested in killing me,” he said, in a distant voice. “I had been brought back to suffer.”

Hal was looking very uncomfortable.“What do you mean, suffer? Can you be more specific?”

Liquid’s eyes stayed closed, flinching periodically. “He would break my bones.”

Hal started, cringing. “Christ,” he breathed, softly.

“They would X-ray them every day until they set again.”

Snake scowled darkly. “To see how fast they healed,” he said, under his breath. “They were interested in his superior genetics.”

Tears were rolling slowly from Liquid’s closed eyes, though he didn’t seem aware of it. They weren’t really emotional tears, Snake thought, grimly. He was remembering pain, the kind that you have no defense against. In a helpless position, it was the only mechanism left to the body.

“But before any of that…he did the first thing any shrewd captor does to dispirit a hostage,” Liquid said, in a low, bitter voice. “He sodomized me. I lost track of how many times.”

Snake made a noise of disgruntled surprise, recoiling at the blunt admission, unsure what to say.

Hal was looking down. “I’m sorry, Liquid. I wish we had known.”

"I don't," Liquid snapped. He was staring down at his hands. His tears had stopped flowing, but there were still hard lines around his eyes.

"Don't say that." Otacon attempted a smile, but at the moment it was well beyond his dramatic range. "It's better to talk about it."

Liquid shook his head. "I don't remember anymore… what I did. But it must have been bad, to deserve something like that. It was… really bad, wasn't it?"

"Don't worry about it," Otacon said. "It's all over, and—"

"Enough!" Snake pushed to his feet. "Hal, you're not helping anyone. Whatever happened in that laboratory… it doesn't change what he did. What he tried to do."

"David…"

Snake shook his head. "That's enough. I've fucking heard enough. Go get Liquid cleaned up or something. He looks like shit."

Otacon glanced away. "Sure, Snake. Whatever you say."

He reached for Liquid's arm, helped him to his feet. But Liquid wasn't paying attention to him anymore; his eyes were fixed on Snake. "I'm sorry," he murmured.

"Save it, Liquid…"

"I mean it. I know that what I did was terrible. That you can't forgive me. But… I'm sorry."

Snake shook his head. "You can say that all you want, but it's not going to be enough."

He folded his arms over his chest.

"End of fucking story."


	8. Chapter 8

There were two things to know about Liquid Snake:

The first was that he existed. The second was that he didn't exist.

Otacon leaned back from the computer screen, rubbing his tired eyes. Four hours of work, and he was still no closer to finding out where Liquid had been for the past two months. He hadn't really had anything to go on. No real name, no real history. Not even a set of fingerprints. Liquid's had been burned off with acid years ago.

Otacon had always prided himself on his ability to find things out. Sometimes, he thought it was the only reason Snake kept him around. Otacon wondered about that from time to time, but always stopped himself before his came to any conclusions.

They were good together, he and Snake. And, whether Snake wanted to admit it or not, they were good for each other.

But this time, Otacon couldn't help him.

With a frustrated sigh, he logged out, and closed the window on his computer. If Liquid was a ghost, then this was a haunting of Exorcist proportions.

It would bother him, Otacon knew that. He wasn't like Snake; he couldn't just switch his concern off like that. He would worry about it until it drove him crazy. It would keep him up nights. This was the reason his hair was already starting to come in gray. He was only thirty, but he already had crows’ feet, like little black ink smudges at the corners of his eyes.

When a quiet knock came on his door, Otacon called, "Come in," without even thinking that Snake never bothered to knock.

He swiveled around in his chair and lifted his eyes. Froze like that, with one foot trailing on the floor and the other pulled up under the seat, when his gaze met Liquid Snake's.

"Oh…" Otacon straightened self-consciously, as though he had been caught doing something wrong. Something more wrong than hacking the CIA's computer network and prying into Liquid's personal files, that was.

"Hey, Liquid. You, um, need something?"

"Not really." Liquid came in without an invitation, and sat on the edge of Otacon's bed. "Just thought you could use some company."

His smile was disarming, but Otacon knew that he was not the one who was feeling lonely tonight.

"Sure," he said, lowering his eyes. He took off his glasses, cleaning them absently on the tail of his shirt. "I… guess we could talk a little. If you want."

"I don't know if I have anything to say," Liquid murmured. "I mean… it's not like I remember any really great stories, you know?"

"I don't have any of those, either. Stories, I mean. Unless you want to hear about the time I made Level 60 on World of Warcraft."

"Excuse me?" said Liquid.

"Nothing…" Otacon glanced away, feeling as though he failed spectacularly even at being self-deprecating.

Liquid’s eyes roamed over the blandly appointed room. “Not an aesthete, I see,” he declared lightly. “My brother… he doesn’t seem to be one either.”

Hal smiled crookedly. “No,” he said. “No…I don’t suppose it matters much to either of us, surroundings. Details.” Maybe that was why he and Snake were good together.

He recalled something Revolver Ocelot had drawled once, in that ominously deprecating way of his, something about how Liquid ‘pranced around shirtless, elocuting like he was doing Shakespeare in the park’. Otacon almost laughed now, though he wouldn’t have dared to laugh then. Just the thought of Revolver Ocelot’s cold gaze pickled Hal’s testicles in seven kinds of brine.

“How…” began Hal, seeking his hands for conversational clues and finding only the orange powdery shrapnel of vanquished Cheetos and the smooth unlined palms of a chronic desk jockey. “How did your shower go? Did Snake take care of you all right? I know he’s no Florence Nightingale, but he generally comes through in a bind.”

“Snake,” mused Liquid. “Ah yes, he tries so very hard, doesn’t he.”

Otacon laughed. "So you noticed.”

“I noticed his body. It’s the mirror of mine.”

“His what?” repeated Otacon, nervously, certain he had misheard.

“Ah. Of course you never look at his body. Make every effort to avoid it, yes…Hal?”

“What? No, I…” Otacon swallowed, pushing his glasses up.

Liquid smiled vaguely and leaned back on the bed. “Makes you feel like less of a man, to have that in your face every day, I imagine. Like one of your comic book heroes.”

Hal’s jaw worked, but he found it impossible to avert his eyes from the languid man with the golden mane. Liquid Snake made Star Blazer sheets look even better, if that were possible. “I…”

“You shouldn’t,” interrupted Liquid, abruptly. “Feel less, that is. You have something he doesn’t. You have compassion. And I thank you for that.” He leaned in, setting a hand lightly on Otacon’s shoulder.

“He’s your brother,” began Hal, bewildered, cheeks warming. 

“You’re more of a brother to him than I am,” said Liquid.

“Did something…happen?” asked Otacon, eyes wide behind his lenses. “Did Snake…do something? He’s…not always predictable.”

“Something. You could say that.”

Otacon didn’t like the sound of that. He knew the stories of how Snake and Liquid fought; of bareknuckled, bone-on-bone brawls. He had heard all about it, and he couldn’t say he was in any hurry to see it in action. “You shouldn’t let him get to you,” he said. “He’s not such a bad guy…”

“I never said he wasn’t. You’re quick to defend him.”

“I’m not!” Otacon sputtered. “I mean… maybe I am. I just don’t want you two starting trouble. There’s a lot of sensitive equipment in the house, and…”

“You’re afraid we’re going to break your toys?” Liquid said.

“I’m afraid he’s going to break your neck again.”

“Vertebrae,” Liquid said, and when Otacon looked confused he elaborated. “He broke my vertebrae. The fourth and the fifth, to be exact.”

“Sounds painful.”

“It was excruciating,” Liquid said. “But not nearly as agonizing as what he did earlier.”

“Yeah?” Otacon sounded skeptical. He hadn’t noticed any new bruises. Liquid had healed up a lot. His recovery had been more complete than Otacon had expected; he hardly even limped anymore, though he did carry himself more carefully. He seemed to always be aware of himself, where he put his feet when he stepped; who stood behind him, where he couldn’t see.

Liquid closed his tired eyes. His chest rose and fell with a deep, lingering breath. “He was trying to help, I think. Snake may be many things, but he doesn’t have the savvy for headgames, does he?"

“I don’t know,” Otacon admitted. “I’m not very savvy myself.”

Liquid smiled politely, and refrained from comment. “Earlier,” he said. “While he was watching me, I think I remembered something.”

“Well, that’s good!” Otacon said, leaning forward expectantly. “What was it? If you tell me, maybe we can start putting things together…”

Liquid shook his head. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a complete memory. Just… a sensation that came over me. A feeling of deep, deep dread. Horror, really. It wasn’t connected to anything in particular, though. It was like instinct. Something I felt, rather than thought…”

“I don’t understand,” Otacon said.

“I don’t either,” Liquid said. “But I attacked him. Snake, I mean. He fought me off. I’m not as strong as I used to be, but I guess I gave him some trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Otacon asked. But Liquid was silent, and he shook his head. “You don’t have to tell me. I guess… maybe it’s something between you and Dave.”

“I was naked,” Liquid said abruptly, as though he hadn’t heard. “Bareass naked on that cold concrete floor. I was shivering by then, and he wouldn’t get off. He was holding me down. I know now, he was afraid I was going to hurt myself. But at the time…that’s not what it felt like.”

Otacon squirmed.

“I wasn’t myself. I was… that other man. The one who they kept in the laboratory. The one who they hurt. And Snake… he wasn’t Snake either. He brought me back from there, though. I’m sure it was just luck, but it was like he knew exactly what to do to me.”

“What happened?” Otacon asked, as wide-eyed and breathless as a Boy Scout listening to a campfire story.

“He shifted his weight a little. He leaned over me. His hands were around my wrists. They were firm, but they were gentle, too. I don’t even have bruises, even though he was fighting hard to keep me down.” Liquid’s eyes were dreamy and faraway. “He leaned down, and he kissed me. It was gentle, too, the way he did that.” He glanced up at Otacon. “He’s a good kisser, you know. He’d probably be great under different circumstances. Strange… to think of a man like that as a generous lover.”

Otacon felt his face flush. He had been pink before, but now he was downright purple with embarrassment. “Liquid…” he said, wondering how he could put it delicately. “You do know… that Snake’s your, um, brother, right?”

“So you keep saying.” Liquid’s smile dimmed a little. “Yes, I know who he is, Hal. I don’t doubt our parentage. I’m just glad that he came for me. Isn’t that what brothers are supposed to do?”

“Yeah,” Otacon said. “They are.”

Liquid stood up. He turned to glance back before he left, and though his face was familiar, the expression on it was like none Otacon had ever seen. Solid Snake never looked at him like that, with genuine gratitude. “Thank you, Hal,” Liquid said. “Whatever happens, I’m glad we could talk.”

“What do you mean, whatever happens?”

Liquid shrugged. “Things happen all the time.”


	9. Chapter 9

Snake was examining the discarded box like a discerning antiquarian.

"Nice firm corners, no buckling....big enough for a man but not too much to handle....Oh yeah....I'm keeping you."

"Would you get in the truck, Dave?" demanded Otacon, exasperated. The whole conversation with Liquid had left him with a strange taste in his mouth, like ozone and brimstone. He was in a testy, unsettled mood- and if truth be told, none too pleased with Solid Snake.

Snake finished tying down the box in the back of the truck, thinking that Otacon really ought to try to be a little nicer to him. After all, Snake had hauled his cookies all the way out here to IKEA just to help him load his new fucking computer desk into the truck. Altogether, that made four- count them- four fucking computer desks, and in Snake’s understanding that made them a bona fide herd of furniture, roaming the industrial savannah of the Philanthropy loft. Otacon collected computer desks the way old ladies collected cats.

Dave hated every one of them, self-consciously wacky and contrived; awkward pressboard modern monstrosities of look-at-me color and proportion. Failing tremendously at their Scandinavian promise to impart prepackaged edginess to the saavy-impaired- much like Scandinavia failed at rock and roll.

Snake grunted, dusting off his hands and tossing a brief glare at the back of Hal’s head. Otacon might have had weak ankles, but Snake wasn't always going to be there to help him out. He wasn't always going to be there to kill cockroaches, either, but that didn't stop Otacon from yelling for help when ever he saw one in the bathtub.

Snake circled around the truck and climbed in behind the wheel. "Are we done? Or do you need me to pick up your dry cleaning for you, too?"

"Ha, ha. Very funny," was Otacon's staccato reply.

Snake knew Hal didn't own any clothes that merited regular washing, much less dry cleaning. Synthetic fabrics were the universe's tender gift to the sleep-deprived genius. Air them out and spray them down with Febreze, and you were ready for another twenty hours of intense stationary gaming.

Snake glanced at Otacon out of the corner of his eye, but didn't comment. If something was bothering him, it would come out soon enough. It was no good asking Otacon to explain himself before he was ready.

"Do you think he's ok?" said Hal, after a moment. "You know. By himself." He wasn't looking at Snake, but his hand picked idly at a fraying hole in the knee of his jeans, through which his china white skin glared like a shy and long-lost sun.

A frown cut deeply, creasing Snake's brow as he watched Otacon's keyboard-nimbled fingers worry the white fibers of criss-crossed cotton, hatching outward like a textile starburst.

Hal paused, running his hand back through the floppy mane of thick sand-colored hair that always threatened to overwhelm him physically. Pushing it back, in the vain hope of taming it. "It's just that we've never left him alone before. One of us has always been with him, since…" Otacon trailed off, remembering that he was angry at Snake, and letting his lips settle into a petulant silence.

Exasperated, Snake stopped the truck and turned to face him. "Since what?" he demanded. "Since the day he intruded on our lives by not dying?" Snake snorted. "Yeah, the heart weeps for Liquid Snake. Just remember, he would have killed me if he could’ve. He would have killed both of us. Then we’d have been the ones lying on that fucking table."

Otacon was quiet, staring straight ahead.

Snake's mouth twitched. "What?" he growled. "You're not speaking to me now? Who put a knot in your foreskin, anyway?" He downshifted, angrily, causing the gears to grind, and Hal winced at the unpleasantly mechanical sound, knowing it was not a good one, even if he knew nothing about cars and driving stick and changing his own oil.

Snake was muttering to himself. "You think you're getting a weapons engineer, only to get it out of the box and find a thirteen year old girl. That's why things should stay in the box. That's why I should stay in the box. Everything makes sense in there. Who needs Zanzibar Land."

And Liquid. Liquid-fucking-Snake. Yet another thing that could have stayed in a box. Or the bag, in this case. Snake was beginning to think he was really on to something.

Otacon was silent for a while. At first, Snake thought that he had given up. It was just as well. Snake didn’t know how kindly he would take to his best friend siding against him with his worst enemy.

Otacon’s fingers twitched a little, tearing the hole in the knee of his jeans a little wider. “You’re right,” he said. “Dave, you’re absolutely right. Things were easier before we brought Liquid back. We should have left it alone.” He looked up. “But we didn’t.”

“Jesus, Hal…”

“No, hear me out,” Otacon said. “You saved his life, Dave. We did. And that made him our responsibility.”

Snake rolled his eyes. “What is that? Elven Law? Just because you read it in a fantasy novel, doesn’t make it true.”

“No, I didn’t read it anywhere. It just makes sense. I know you’re a decent enough guy, Dave. You’re not some kind of sociopath or anything. That’s why I don’t understand…”

He seemed to be struggling for words, and that bothered Snake. Otacon had always been the more articulate one, the one who knew how to say things, even if he didn’t always know what to say in polite company.

“What is it?” Snake prompted.

“I don’t understand why you’d do that to him, Dave.” Otacon blushed. “He’s your brother, for god’s sake. And he’s been hurt. He’s disoriented, but he trusted you. But you… did what you did anyway.”

“What did I do?” Snake said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Otacon bit his lip, uncertain, determined. Skeptical but desperate.He had hoped Snake would know exactly what he was talking about, that he would blush and burn at the tips of his ears like Hal would have, but life with Dave was seldom so simple. He should have known.

That wasn't fucking Elven Law either. Just years of experience with a big, dumb mercenary as a roommate.

"You want me to say it, don't you?" he said, finally, crossing his arms, then worrying his hair, then crossing his arms again. "Fine, I will."

"Fine," gritted Snake. "Just say it."

"Fine," retorted Otacon, stalling the uncomfortable words that seemed as unwieldy as an all-day jawbreaker in his mouth.

_Or your brother's tongue._

"Just spit it out, Hal," thundered Snake, in a rare moment of elevated tone. 

"Agh!" shrieked Hal, startled.

Snake let his head drop onto the steering wheel. "Just. Fucking. Make. Words, Otacon," he muttered, wearily. "I don't care what you think I did. I've been accused of a lot of things by a lot of people. I can take it."

Hal wasn't so sure. "You've CQC'd a lot of people, too," he pointed out.

"Unless you want to be one of them, you'd better spill."

Hal fell silent, and Liquid's confession lingered in his forebrain, the somnolent tone of his velvet-phrased recollection, the shocking action he'd imparted to Hal in an almost reverential way...

Otacon let his head fall forward, so that his overlong thatch of mane shielded his eyes and mouth from view. "I just can't believe you did that," he mumbled. "What were you thinking? Do you hate him that much, that you'd fuck with his head in such a sick way?"

Snake's head raised. "What?" he asked, in a low voice.

Otacon shook his head. "You kissed him," he said, disbelieving. "Kissed him, like a....kiss!"

Snake laughed then, though he wasn’t sure which one of them was more surprised to hear it. “Is that what he told you?” he said. “Is that what your little slumber party last night was all about? Jesus Christ, did you guys do each other’s makeup and hair, too?”

“It’s not funny,” Otacon said, blushing a fierce shade of red. “Did you kiss him or not?”

Snake sighed. “Hal…listen. If we were hiking in the desert, and a huge rattler bit you right on the ass, would you let me suck the poison out?”

“Out of my ass?”

“Yeah.”

“Would I die otherwise?”

“We’re miles from civilization, and we don’t have any anti-venom. You’d die almost for sure. Unless I get down on my knees and suck your ass.”

Otacon had to think about it for longer than Snake had expected. “I guess… I’d have to, wouldn’t I?”

Snake nodded. “Yeah. You would. And that’s why I had to do that to Liquid. He was dying. I had to drain the poison. If he told you otherwise… then he’s been hit on the head even harder than we thought.”

Otacon's eyes narrowed behind his glasses, suspicious. "Wait a minute. You're not being metaphorical, are you?" he asked, almost, but not quite, brave enough to sneer. "Because if you are, I'll have to recalibrate my entire understanding of reality."

Snake hit the gas. "This is stupid," he announced, through a tight jaw. "Forget it, Otacon. He's deranged, delusional. You know how I hate that guy."

"I know that the only Snakes in that bathroom were you- and Liquid. And if anyone got poisoned, you have nowhere else to look." Hal said this much, then fell quiet, drawing his feet up onto the seat and settling his chin in his hands stonily.

Snake snorted quietly. If Otacon was just going to pout like that, then he could just forget about Snake offering him any help putting his new desk together.

They parked in the lot around back of the warehouse in silence, and wrangled the box out of the truck without speaking. With Otacon at one end and Snake at the other, they carried it to the cargo elevator. It was there that the quiet became unbearable.

“I just think you could have handled the situation better,” Otacon said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“He was panicking, Hal. I didn’t exactly have time to construct a complex computer simulation.”

“You could have…”

“Look,” Snake said, “can we just drop the subject?”

Otacon’s lips pressed together tightly. He glared at Snake across the top of the box they held. “Fine.” The elevator shuddered to a halt, and the little bell over the door chimed once, signaling top floor. “Consider it dropped,” Otacon said, turning to go inside.

Then he froze, with one foot on the elevator, and the other on the warehouse floor. His fingers went slack around the corners of the box; he lost his grip and it fell to the ground. “Dave…our apartment.”

Snake was already inside. His posture had changed; his shoulders bowed forward into a cautious crouch, one hand on his hip where a gun should have been. “Wait outside,” he said.

Otacon swallowed hard, and followed him inside. Someone had been here. There was no chance he was leaving his Linux box at the mercy of that monster.

Snake retrieved his gun from a cabinet near the door. It was untouched, like all the valuables. The place had been ransacked, but this was no robbery. He secured the premises automatically, training kicking in, feeling the old familiar dread in a brand new place- a place he'd began to feel almost safe-

There was no one here, he thought grimly, not any more. They’d gotten what they wanted and got out. Like a surgical scalpel, incisive and precisely excised. He knew it, intrinsically, and yet there was protocol to follow.

Hal trailed him at a slight lag, tripping over flotsam and jetsam, haunting his progress like a blind shadow. "Wait, Snake..." His voice sounded abruptly panicked.

"Your computers are fine, Otacon," Snake snapped, raising his voice, his agitation steeping, growing, for reasons he couldn't ascertain or pin down to a fine point. He struck his gun behind him, dismissively, in a gesture that said shut up more eloquently than anything short of a fist to the maxilla.

"Dave! Listen-"

Snake froze, raising his head. Listening, because he never disregarded that word. Experience ran too deep, and you didn't fuck with instinct. "What am I listening for?" he asked Otacon, through clenched teeth.

"Listen- to me," hissed Hal, clutching his elbow. "Liquid."

Snake jerked into a new awareness.

Liquid.

"That bastard." But as soon as he thought it, he realized it was unlikely that Liquid had tossed their pad and split. He could have done that long before now, throttled them both in their sleep-

Well. He could have throttled Hal.

But the point was, it made no sense. Liquid had no real memory, nowhere to go. Had shown no desire to leave the warehouse, for that matter, even to walk around the block. His fear ran deep. 

Snake felt a chill. Maybe he'd had reason to be afraid. What were they dealing with here?

Not what, thought Snake. The "what" is always the same. Who.

“He’s not here, is he?” Otacon said.

Snake didn’t answer. It was obvious.

Sweeping his gaze once more over the damage, Snake realized that Liquid had not gone quietly. He had struggled, at least. The mess in the main room – the scattered papers and overturned chairs – spoke of a struggle. Snake’s trained eyes followed its progress. Liquid had been on the couch. The intruder had moved up behind him, gotten the drop on him. But Liquid had thrown him off, and they had moved toward the back bedrooms. Halfway down the hall, the trail grew cold.

Snake frowned. Though Liquid was greatly weakened, he wasn’t out of the game completely. Snake had grappled with the man himself, and he knew how strong Liquid still was. It would have taken a professional to subdue him so quickly.

“What do we do now?” Otacon asked quietly.

Snake bent down to set an overturned chair upright. He didn’t say anything to Otacon immediately, because he hated having to admit that he didn’t know. Several moments passed, and with nothing helpful or otherwise issuing from Otacon's quadrant, Snake felt the enormity of something unpleasant that he hadn't quite acknowledged bearing down on the crown of his skull, weighting his neck like an albatross.

"You want to know what we do now?" he said, shortly. "We pick up this mess."

"And what?"

"And nothing, Hal." Dave paused, flinching, averting his eyes so that Otacon wouldn't catch him at it. "We've done more than he deserves."

"This time they'll kill him, Snake," said Hal, tremulously. 

"No," muttered Snake, forcefully. "They won't. If they wanted him this damn bad, there has to be another reason."

What reason could anyone have for abducting a full-grown uber-mercenary with an amnesia-veiled megalomanial complex and an overwrought amalgam anglo-trash vocal delivery?

_A fixer upper._

Snake clenched his jaw.

"They'll make him pay," whispered Otacon, shaking his head, pale and wan. "Pay for escaping. Pay for cheating death."

Snake's hackles shivered violently. "Since when did my so-called brother manage to ingratiate himself so much with my so-called best friend?" he snapped, vehement in his frustration. "What did he do, Otacon? Compliment your Gundam models? Play Waldo of Warcrap with you or whatever?"

Hal ignored his venom, looking peaked and stricken. He leaned back against a dumped bookshelf and surveyed the wreckage, palm against his brow in a classical pose of distress. 

Snake glared at him, tossing his gun down and crossing his arms. "I have two words for you, Otacon, and you ought to remember them. Attempted fratricide."

Otacon's lips eased weakly into a bloodless, humorless caricature of a smile. “I have two words for you, that I'm sure you haven't forgotten,” he said. “Revolver. Ocelot.”

Otacon was right about that. Snake hadn’t forgotten. And that name had crossed his mind, too. The same way he had always known Ocelot’s path would cross his again. Revolver Ocelot was more than just a mercenary. Snake didn’t need anyone to spell that much out for him.

“So what, Hal?” he said at last. “It’s none of our business. Even if we were certain Ocelot did have him… how are we supposed to find them?”

“I found him once before, didn’t I?” Otacon said defensively.

“That just means they’ll hide him better this time.”

Otacon straightened. “What if I find where he is?” he said calmly, evenly. “Will you go after him then?”

“It’s a waste of resources,” Snake replied.

“Why are you so adamant about this?”

“Because it’s my ass on the line, Hal!” Snake snapped. “You’re not the one getting shot at. If they catch me…they’ll string me up right next to him, you know. Because we’re really not all that different, me and Liquid. What’s good enough for him, you can sure as shit bet would be good enough for me.”

Otacon was quiet for a while. “You’re scared,” he said at last.

“Goddamnit, Hal…”

“You’re scared,” Otacon repeated, more forcefully. “Imagine how he must feel.”


	10. Chapter 10

When Liquid awoke, he did not move.

Though he did not remember his training consciously, he knew in the back of his mind that it was important for him to assess his surroundings. It might give him an advantage later on, or it might just keep his ass out of the fire for a few more minutes.

He was stretched out on his side, and the ground was uneven beneath him. It bobbed and shuddered in a steady rhythm. Sometimes he felt his feet elevated, sometimes his head. The walls creaked like old hinges with each plunge.

Liquid tried to use the tired creaks to map the shape of the room without opening his eyes. He had just begun to sketch an image in his mind when a soft voice spoke to him.

"I can hear you breathing."

Liquid's lips parted, and his heart caught in his throat. After a moment the shock of being spoken to subsided. Liquid felt an odd sense of deja vu, but he couldn't pin it down. He'd become used to being an amnesiac.

"Yeah? Why can't I hear you?" he drawled, coughing slightly.

He almost heard the man's smile. It suffused his whole tone with a modest glow. "Maybe I don't breathe."

Liquid gave a gritty, cynical laugh. His ribs hurt slightly, the result of...

...the struggle. He remembered now, his mind gaining cohesion rapidly and narrowing in on the face of his abductor. His eyes jerked open, and saw raw blackness. He realized he'd been hooded, like a skittish racehorse.

"Where's Solid Snake?" he demanded, beginning to work against the restraints on his wrists. 

"Snake?" the voice teased out the word, as if he were playing with it, loathe to let it leave the confines of his mouth. "Ah, your brother at the cellular level." A pause. "We have no use for him. Not yet. We'll see how we do with you, first. Is that amenable?"

"Not really," muttered Liquid, beginning to hyperventilate. Forcing himself, somehow, to still his responses, stop his panic. Utterly unaware of how he knew to do so.

He felt hands on his head, as the hood was slipped away, and his hair fell in front of his face. "You have such an appealing accent," intoned the man, and Liquid raised his eyes.

Sweat had dampened blond to dark gold. Through the mangrove tangle of his hair, he could see his keeper's appearance, and while arresting, it evoked no deja vu. He'd been afraid, truly afraid, that he would know him.

The stranger straightened up, and stepped over Liquid's prone body. His movements had a smooth, effortless quality to them. His feet made almost no sound on the steel floors. Not like the knife that he pulled from a sheathe at his waist. That made plenty of noise.

Liquid winced at the hiss of metal against leather, and for a moment fear threatened to overcome him again. But he swallowed down the knot in his throat, and hardened himself against what was to come. But the stranger only slipped the knife beneath the ropes around Liquid's wrists, slicing through them.

Liquid sat up after he was free. Rubbing, bewildered, at his sore hands, trying to work the stiffness out of his numb fingers. He turned his eyes up to his captor's face. The man was watching him curiously, with a tiny smile on his lips. "Aren't you afraid I'll escape?"

The stranger flicked his hair back with a toss of his head. Fine, black hair. It fell, rail straight, to the middle of his back. It would undoubtedly, Liquid thought, be soft to the touch, but heavy and thick like a handful of quality silk.

"Not really," he said mockingly, and his smile sharpened momentarily, like the blade of his knife.

Liquid's lips twisted, and he recognized the gesture as the distant cousin of a smile. He felt it skin deep, but it was absent from his bones. "That's funny," he said softly. "We might as well laugh while we can." His wrists were sore from being immobilized, and he rubbed them slowly.

"Push your hair back," murmured his company, coolly. "I want to see your face." He moved forward and did it himself, grasping Liquid's jawline and smoothing it back carefully. Liquid glared up at him, unflinching. The man's gloved hand traced his cheek, gliding lightly over the rise of the bone. His eyes narrowed. "That's better. We may as well both have some nice scenery to look at...while we wait."

Liquid held the stranger’s blue gaze for a moment, but his eyes were too strange. They burned and froze at the same time, like the glare of the sun off glacial ice. He had to look away. “What are we waiting for?” Liquid asked quietly. 

“I would hate to spoil the surprise,” the stranger said. “It’s a hell of a surprise.” 

“I'll bet,” Liquid muttered. He used the momentary silence to look around, taking in his surroundings. They were in a small square room, like a cell. A single fluorescent light glared down at them from the ceiling high above. The door was sealed with a watertight hatch. “This is a ship,” Liquid said abruptly. 

“I hope you’re not the type to feel seasick. I won’t hold your hair back while you throw up.” 

“I feel like shit,” Liquid said, but he was sure the tight knot in his gut wasn’t from seasickness. 

"It's the tranquilizers. They have a nasty come-down, or so I've been told." He stayed where he was, crouched elegantly like a noble savage, looking Liquid over silently in blatant appreciation. Liquid looked down where his eyes roamed, and saw that he'd been stripped to the waist. "I was very careful not to damage our capital," he murmured darkly. "Even though you really put up a fight, _muschi-de-pamânt_."

He reached out, hard reptilian eyes fixed on Liquid's mouth, his jaw. "Or perhaps...I will call you something more suitable."

The man's fingers touched down on Liquid's bare chest with criminal impunity. The boldness of a mercenary. Liquid felt the smoothness of the leather as the man's fingertips grazed over his nipple and pinched it with light, slow malice. "How do you like that?" the black-haired man moaned, biting his lip. 

Liquid shuddered and twisted away instinctively. "You seem to like it enough for both of us."

"You like it just fine," the stranger said, licking his lips. "I know your history, Liquid Snake."

"And my name, obviously." He hadn't even known that. It still felt wrong, and he felt no affinity for it. But people seemed dead-set on telling him who he was.

The hand that explored the muscles of his chest showed no signs of stopping.

Liquid took a breath. "Clearly we're past the awkward stage. How about you tell me what I can call you?" 

"Vamp is fine," the stranger said. His eyes were blue, and hungry like the sea. "For now." 

"I suppose a real name would be too much to ask for." 

Vamp shrugged, and pushed languidly to his feet. He turned away, as though having abruptly lost interest, but the glance he cast at Liquid dared him to follow. "Do any of us have real names anymore?" he said. "Do you think we deserve them?" 

"I don’t think you and I are anything alike," Liquid muttered. 

"Perhaps you’re right. You did escape, after all. An… admirable bid for freedom. You made them angry, you know. I've never seen them so angry." He laughed. The memory was a fond one for him.

"Them," repeated Liquid, rubbing his temples. He laughed bloodlessly, a bitter snort. Remembering what Otacon had told him about the day they found him. "I didn't escape, Vamp. I was reclaimed, like a piece of salvage metal."

"Then it's not your fault," Vamp said. "But whoever took you should have known what would happen."

"He only wanted me because he thought I was dead," Liquid replied. "He thought he'd killed me. Once he realized I was alive, he didn't want anything to do with me anymore. He would have brought me back himself, if he could have."

"Solid Snake, you mean? Your other half."

"My brother," Liquid corrected bitterly. "He says he's my brother at least."

"He did kill you, you know." Vamp smiled, but it wasn't meant to be reassuring. "You were dead for nine and a half minutes." His blue eyes flicked suggestively over Liquid's body. "I suppose you were too handsome a prize to let go so easily."

"Maybe it doesn't matter…" Liquid said. He shifted, pulling his knees up to his chest. It was chilly in the hold of the ship. "If my own brother thinks I'm better off dead, then perhaps I am." He looked up at Vamp. There was tension around his eyes. "I won't fight you," he said. "Not if there's no point to it."

"You have nothing to fear from me," said Vamp, leaning back against a stack of cargo crates. "I don't have clearance to kill you, Pretty Thing." He half-reclined, languid, one knee up, boot braced back against the wooden slatted sides of the shipping crate. His knife emerged once more from its sheath, and into his hand, as he tested the blade, sliding it lightly along the pad of his thumb. "Clearance," he laughed throatily, after a moment. "Well, that's not exactly the word. But close enough."

_You have nothing to fear..._

The words echoed in Liquid's mind. And three of them stuck like poisoned arrows.

_Not from me._

"But they'll kill me, won't they?" Liquid said. "Why? What do they want?"

"It's nothing personal. It's just the man you are," Vamp said. "Perhaps that's why we are not so different. We were both born under a bad sign."

"Will you…" Liquid began, but then he stopped, shaking his head. "You won't protect me from them, will you?"

Vamp laughed. It was not an unpleasant laugh, but it was the last thing that Liquid wanted to hear. "Protect _you_?" he said. He laughed again. "You sound so pitiful, son of Big Boss. Don't look at me with those sad eyes. They might just make me do what you say."

"But you don't like them either," Liquid said. "You don't like following orders from them."

"What makes you say that?"

"A man like you," Liquid said. "Looks like he doesn't have to follow anyone's orders."

Vamp looked away. "You're wrong," he said. It was all he said, for a moment. "For every man like me, and you...or your brother," he added, smirking briefly. "...there's a man like _him_."

Liquid felt a deep and welling unease, a loss of equilibrium, as if Vamp had just stamped on the floor and made it disintegrate into thin air.

"Him," he repeated, feeling his blood drain from his face and leave him white, almost as white as the alabaster skin of the man who stood before him, like a statue carved from frost. "I don't want to meet him."

"Oh, I think it's a little late for that, don't you?" Vamp said. "You were the one who helped him get this far, are you not?"

Liquid's first instinct was to deny it outright, but he didn't. He just shook his head. "There are a lot of things I've done that I don't remember."

"How fortunate for you," Vamp said. "We can't all be so lucky."

He put the knife away, and came forward again. Curious now, and drawn inexplicably toward Liquid. And he knelt down in front of him, so their eyes met/ "You really don't remember, do you?" he murmured, softly incredulous, tilting his head. "Amazing. I thought...I swore that you were lying. You're a legendary liar...Master Miller."

Liquid turned his face away, conflicted by the inexplicable attraction he felt at being held beneath the man's unrelenting gaze. It was bizarre, the way this Vamp studied him. "Did I know you?" he asked, finally, in a low voice. Hesitancy was writ in the words, and on his face. 

If he had, it must have been rather well. The idea made him shiver. Could he be looking at a former friend? A colleague? 

A former...

Vamp leaned in, and though Liquid did not rise to meet him, he didn't pull away when Vamp kissed him. A man like this was used to getting what he wanted. "We all knew of you," Vamp said. "You're a legend. You and your brother both. But I always did like you better than him."

"Why?"

Vamp laughed. "If you don't know, then I won't tell you. It's more romantic this way, don't you think?"

Liquid reached up, touching the back of Vamp's hand. "It's a long way to where we're going, isn't it?"

"It's not so far," Vamp said. "But it is not so near, either. There must be something we can do to pass the time."

"I guess you're not talking about playing Twenty Questions."

"Maybe," whispered Vamp darkly, winding his hands into Liquid's golden hair at the temples. "But only if the answer to all of them is yes."

Vamp's mouth enveloped his again, and it was cold comfort, and he wanted it badly- the first willing human contact he'd had since...

Snake.

The hot pain shot through him, and was promptly numbed under Vamp's icy caress.

"Yes," groaned Liquid, roughly. "A hundred times, yes."

"That accent," breathed Vamp, shuddering. "Will be the death of me."


	11. Chapter 11

Vamp slipped his long coat off, laying it out on the cold steel floor. Underneath, he wore a pair of blue jeans and a black tee-shirt. He didn't look much like a soldier, as far as Liquid could tell. But he did look strong. Strong enough, perhaps, for both of them.

Liquid reached up, curling his fingers in Vamp's collar and pulling him down. He resisted a little, just enough to feel Liquid's muscles work. "Don't tease me," Liquid murmured. "Don't play with me."

Vamp's eyes traveled over Liquid with quiet predatory hunger. "Don't be ridiculous," he crooned. "This isn't a game."

Liquid's eyes narrowed. "This is my last cigarette, isn't it...Vamp."

Vamp's cool hand touched the muscles of his chest and trailed downward, over the slight dark blond hair that crowned his lower abdomen. Liquid shuddered, raising his head, feeling his lips grow pliant. Realizing he wanted to be kissed.

"Now, now," murmured Vamp darkly, leaning in. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

He kissed Liquid's mouth, parting his lips easily. A light touch on his chest was all it took to convince Liquid to lay back on Vamp's discarded coat. His hair fanned out around his face.

"I hate cigars," hissed Liquid.

"Your heart is beating very fast," Vamp said, and Liquid wondered how he knew. "Are you afraid?"

"A little…" Liquid said.

"Of me?"

"No," Liquid said. He reached up, running his hands along Vamp's arms, up to his powerful shoulders and then over the curved rise of his chest. "You're not so bad."

"But you're wrong," Vamp purred. He leaned back, and tugged his shirt off over his head. "I'm terrible."

"I guess it was too much to ask that my final screw be a good one."

Vamp's eyebrows inverted. "That's not what I mean."

"Show me what you mean, then."

"In time," smirked Vamp. His fingers stealthily crept downward and began to undo Liquid's belt. Liquid watched, breathing softly. "Right now," said Vamp, "I want you to show me what kind of weapon a legendary mercenary packs."

Liquid's breath caught in his throat.

He liked Vamp's assured confidence. Liquid had felt uneasy and unbalanced ever since awakening in Snake's warehouse loft with the man's haunting, familiar face looking down at him. He had begun to wonder if he would ever feel right again. But Vamp seemed content to show him the way.

When he hesitated, Vamp only smiled indulgently. "Perhaps I'll go first, then," he purred, and eased his jeans down over his trim hips. The man's eyes were bright and intense, but Liquid did not blush or turn away. "You like what you see?"

Vamp’s loins were carved and artful, and the muscles and bones of his hips shelved out and down at smooth, vicious angles. His cock was half-rigid, marble flesh waiting impatiently to surge into life. A nightmare Michelangelo.

“Who wouldn’t like that?” replied Liquid, after a moment’s rapt observation.

Liquid was feeling strange, but for the first time it seemed to make sense, who he was and how he was. He was the kind of man who would screw a complete and dangerous stranger in the rough and shifting hold of a ship. He was the kind of man who would seduce his own brother.

“Yes,” he said. “”Yes, I like it very much, Vamp.”

Liquid laughed darkly, reaching out to grasp the man’s hair. It was like raw linen in his hands, and he wound it around one fist experimentally. He was feeling a creeping insolence, welling from the cracks in his foundation like a forgotten spring that a heavy house had been hastily planted over.

“Your turn,” Vamp breathed, eyes roving downward. “Impress me, Liquid Snake. Make me sorry when you die.”

"You'll be sorry," Liquid said. He took Vamp's hands roughly between his own, guiding them to his crotch. "I'll make sure of it."

"That's the spirit," Vamp said, peeling Liquid's jeans away. He slipped his hand inside, past worn denim, and when his fingers found nothing but skin, he laughed. Malevolently and genuinely amused. "Did you forget to wash the whites?"

"It's more comfortable like this," Liquid said.

Vamp's hands slid back, curling around Liquid's ass and sliding his jeans down. His breath spilled against the hollow between Liquid's hips, almost unbearably hot in the freezing air of the ship's hold.

"Vamp…"

"What's wrong?" Vamp's hand closed around his cock, and Liquid shudder, feeling himself growing hard. Pressing up against the strength of Vamp's trained and careful fingers. "Did you think I wouldn't take good care of you?" Vamp purred.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” said Liquid, closing his eyes.

Vamp’s hand was soft, uncallused, like a man of leisure. Not like a super soldier. Liquid pitched and shifted, pulling the strange, unearthly mercenary closer with one arm.

“Not bad at all,” intoned Vamp, a note of admiration in his throaty voice. “Is your brother as impressive as you are? Or is this a…recessive trait?”

Liquid broke a pained smile at the mention of Solid Snake. “Now,” he breathed, “How would I know that?”

Vamp tightened his grip, leaning over him, his hair brushing Liquid’s nipples like ropes of black silk, making him shiver. He stilled himself, forcing down the response. The boat rocked languidly, slowly beneath them.

“Oh, I’ve heard about you,” Vamp said. “Apparently you had quite the…loaded interaction, Frumos.”

“Solid Snake and I?” Liquid snorted, averting his eyes. “That’s rich.”

"I've seen pictures." His hand moved, stroking Liquid's cock in slow, thoughtful half-circles. "He's beautiful, just like you."

"I didn't notice," Liquid said. And he was surprised to find he could lie so expertly, so casually. "...He's my brother, you know."

"Yes," Vamp whispered. "I know."

He bent his head, his hair coiling loosely around Liquid's thighs. His lips parted, taking him in slowly, fluidly. Liquid gasped as Vamp's mouth slid over him, all the way to the base of his cock. His fingers twitched, curling against nothing, as though he intended to draw it closer.

Vamp pulled back a little, and when he spoke cool air spilled over the skin he had just dampened. "Tell me what you want," he murmured. "You just have to say it, and it will be yours."

Liquid's breath came harsh and hot to his chest. How long had it been? He had no way of knowing, no reference point. Had Liquid Snake, the mercenary, the supersoldier, been a monk or a lothario?

"Do you know," he said quietly, "did you ever hear...have I done this before? With a man?"

He felt that he knew the answer to that, as he could not imagine sex with a woman, and he'd had little trouble imagining sex with...

_Your own bloody brother._

Liquid bit off the thought fiercely.

"You've heard a lot about me, you said. Was I celibate? Mission-driven?" He reached slowly down, taking hold of Vamp's cock, squeezing and stroking the hardening contours, surprised at how easily he managed the deed with no foresight whatsoever. Maybe he was a natural. The thought made him smile grimly. "Or was I...more carnally prolific?"

Vamp laughed, setting a hand over Liquid's to urge him on. "Some things… were not included on your file, I'm afraid." He leaned down for a bitter kiss. "It was a grievous oversight, I'm sure."

Liquid closed his eyes, and buried himself in the taste of Vamp's mouth. He was almost perfect, Liquid thought. Solid Snake would never have been this eager or this accommodating. Even if he was a stranger to this, Vamp would make it easy for him. He wouldn't feel ashamed afterwards, not with someone like this.

"I want you," Liquid said abruptly. "Just you. The details don't matter."

"Ah…" Vamp shuddered, and his hips moved forward, grinding up into Liquid's hand. 

Liquid was surprised, but pleased. It seemed he had said the right thing.

"You'll have me," Vamp murmured. "You can have all of me. The question is…"

Liquid kissed him again, and his hand tightened around Vamp's cock. He could feel an urgent and erratic pulse against his fingers, and when he slicked his thumb over the tip, it came away damp. "There's no question about it," Liquid said.

Vamp smiled, and it was a gritty, filthy smile. "I think I miss you already, Liquid Snake," he purred, shifting forward.

Liquid felt how slick he'd made Vamp's hand, how easily it slipped over the skin. He was still half-dazed with the very idea that he was here, and reclaiming some part of his identity, when he felt Vamp's weight settle over him briefly. The black-haired villain was straddling him, now, and Liquid's eyes widened when he realized what Vamp had in mind.

Vamp tilted his head to the side. "That's an interesting reaction," he purred. "Did you think I was going to hurt you?"

"I…" Liquid started to say, but he was cut off by a sharp kiss.

"Don't answer that," Vamp said.

Liquid swallowed, and heard his throat click dryly. "Come," he said, moving his hands to Vamp's hips, tugging him down. "Come on."

Vamp's hand tightened around the base of Liquid's cock, and he eased himself down. He took him in easily, and he made no sound. "Yes," he whispered. "You trust me now." His hand came to rest over Liquid's eyes, urging them to close. "Show me that you trust me."

Liquid's lips parted, emitting a drawn-out moan. "Christ," he spat. "You're magnificent." But Vamp's words ricocheted around his mind, and he couldn't evade them. "I trust you," he breathed. "Do what you want."

Vamp smiled and slipped his hand onto the floor, all the while letting his hips rock slowly and relentlessly. "Trust me enough to close your eyes," he crooned, licking his lips and narrowing his gaze like a Siamese cat.

Liquid nodded, feverish. It went against his better judgment, but his instinct told him that if Vamp wanted to kill him, he'd have done it by now- while he was out, or right when he woke up, disoriented and woozy. No, Vamp was enjoying himself, judging from the sounds he made, low and demanding in his throat. Liquid let his eyes slip closed, and now he was even more attuned on the erotogenic pulse that vibrated in his flesh.

It was fast, when it came, almost too fast to notice. It hurt, but the pain was precise, and swiftly receding, and he barely had time to gasp in surprise, much less snarl in outrage, before he felt Vamp's lips and tongue against his throat, kissing, laving the wound-

The wound?

"What the hell did you do," he muttered, as Vamp fucked him into the ground with barbaric abandon.

"I opened the tap," the dark man murmured against his jaw. "Just a little bit, a taste, Frumos. You're so beautiful. I had to take a little...to remember you by."

Liquid's eyes flung open. He realized the fleeting cool feeling at his neck had been steel, a blade. "You cut me," he accused, but made no effort to stop Vamp, or dethrone him from on high. Liquid dug his fingers into Vamp's hips, hard enough to mark bruises into his pale skin. But it was the only attempt at revenge he allowed himself. "As long as it's just a taste…" he sighed. He was beginning to feel lightheaded, but he knew it wasn't from blood loss.

The cut that marred the side of Liquid's throat had been superficial to begin with, and Vamp lavished so much sweet attention on the wound that the blood hardly had a chance to seep from it before it was licked away. When this was finished, there would be nothing more than a slightly darker spot of irritated skin there. A lovebite, that no one would even notice unless they knew what they were looking for.

"You're a psycho, you know that?" Liquid sighed, tilting his head back against the cold steel floor.

"Oh?" Vamp whispered, with cruel laughter in his voice.

"Yeah. A real… fucking psycho."

"But you taste so good," Vamp murmured. He shifted, flexing internal muscles around him. "Almost as good as you feel."

Liquid cried out. A single sharp, sobbing moan that echoed off the walls and came back to him a gutted and metallic sound. "It's just blood…" he gasped.

Vamp laughed indulgently. "Look at me," he said, taking Liquid's chin and tilting it back. "Look at me and say that." Liquid turned to face him, and when he did, Vamp darted forward, claiming his mouth in a kiss. He almost pulled away when he tasted blood on Vamp's lips. "I believe this belongs to you,” whispered Vamp. “I’m returning what I took. Don’t spurn this rare gesture, Liquid Snake.”

After a moment, he relented, and parted to receive his tongue, slick and softly copper-flavored. Blood, his own blood. Nothing unclean. Nothing that hadn’t been his to begin with.

Nothing that hadn’t been his.

"Liquid,” he muttered, defiantly, grasping Vamp’s hips in his hands, punctuating the word with a sharp downward jerk of his powerful arms. “Just…Liquid.”

 _So fucking twisted_ , his mind accused. _You’re the sick fuck Snake always thought you were, the criminal he reflected back at you with those flat and mirrored eyes._

No judgment came from the sleek and serpentine Romanian astride him, and Liquid was determined that he would offer him none in return.

“Forget him,” he snarled, crushing his face against Vamp’s chest, against long skeins of black silk and hard muscle.

_Fuck you, Brother. You’d have rather I died at your hands. My resurrection was an inconvenient complication._

"That's right," Vamp purred, and his voice was still even, his tone oddly detached, even though his breath had begun to come faster now, and his heartbeat rang like a church bell again Liquid's cheek. "Forget all about him," Vamp said. "I'll take care of you now."

"Yes…" Liquid gasped. He wanted to thank Vamp. He wanted to tell him that he knew he was lying, and that he was grateful all the same. But he was long past the point where sentences of more than one or two words stopped making sense.

Liquid's breath caught in his throat, and his fingers clutched tighter, cutting bruises into Vamp's shoulders. He didn't remember the last time he had felt this way, but he knew that he was well acquainted with the tightening in the pit of his stomach. Liquid felt his jaw clench, and a cry ripped from his throat, low and gutteral, echoing off the walls of the hold. "Fuck," he spat, convulsing, feeling everything release and rocket upward into Vamp's demanding form, riding him down again, hard. "Fuck, Christ, God."

"That accent," Vamp crooned, on the edge of his breath, the pontillo. "I want to hear you say my name." He leaned in, biting his lip. "...Next...time..." he hissed, trailing off, as he stiffened and surged his hips forward one last time.

Liquid groaned again, little more than a faint echo of his earlier cries. He shuddered, as Vamp fell limp against his chest. Sweat-damp hair clung to his cheeks, slipping into the corners of his mouth when he spoke. His eyes were closed, and he didn't know whose hair it was and he did not care to know.

"I can't…" Liquid murmured.

"Oh?" He felt Vamp's hand on the back of his neck, stroking gently. "Why not?"

"Vamp?" Liquid laughed wearily. "Please. Nothing will ruin the mood faster than that."

"Perhaps," Vamp said. "Very well. You'll just have to call me Adrian, then."

"Adrian…?"

"Shh." Vamp caught Liquid's chin, tilting his face up so he could kiss him sharply. "Just like that. But I want you to save it for a special occasion."


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That fic you like is going to come back in style...

Liquid didn’t know how many days passed. It wasn’t until the fifth time that Vamp brought him food and water that he was even aware that he had been counting at all. It seemed impossible to force himself not to. He wanted only to forget, to lose himself in the sameness of this place, as if he could will himself to fall into eternal purgatory, tended to and tormented by the same beautiful devil forever.

But his conditioning ran deep. His body would not let him forget all the things that his mind no longer knew. It kept trying to drive him physically back into the world, force him to meet his fate recklessly, head-on, without regard for life or limb.

“I think I know who I am,” he said at last. He had wanted to for a long time now, had been saving the revelation up for a bigger audience. Vamp would have to do.

“Do you?” Vamp’s brows drew together, a heavy dramatic line. “You remember, then?”

“You sound disappointed. Did you like me better when I was no one? A ghost?”

“I wouldn’t say disappointed, exactly,” Vamp replied.

“It’s not that I remember,” Liquid went on, as though Vamp hadn’t said anything. “It’s not that I know anything concrete. It’s just a feeling I have now.” Like being steadier on his feet. Like a wound that had taken a long time to heal but had finally closed.

Vamp tilted his head. “That’s good, of course,” he murmured, regarding Liquid with an expression he was beginning to recognize, a lust that was becoming familiar. His hand eased over Liquid’s shoulder with an impunity that shouldn’t have been, an intimacy that seemed stolen and surreal. “Perhaps we can find other feelings.”

Liquid looked at him, eyes narrowing, lips creasing in a faint smile. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.” 

He’d discovered something else in himself, something that had started surfacing from time to time like a cryptic beast in a shadowy pond. Nihilism. Amusement. These things were powerful, but not in the way of Solid Snake’s brute, hamfisted determination. These were things that spoke of endurance, forbearance. A bitter kind of grit.

Yes, he thought he knew a little more about who Liquid Snake had been.

Vamp probably knew many things about him, but reflected little of it back to him, despite the hours they’d spent making each other comfortable in the shifting hold.

“I would like it,” Vamp said, averting his eyes. He was silent for a moment, lashes crowning the high vault of his cheeks like the dusky wings of a sparrow. “For today is the day I’m to bring you...to him.”

“Him.” Liquid’s voice was sharp and bloodless.

Vamp raised his eyes slowly, almost coquettishly. “Don’t be afraid,” he purred, uncoiling, moving closer. “You’ve already been through hell more times than you know.”

“That’s supposed to comfort me?”

“No,” intoned Vamp, easing his hand down Liquid’s bare chest and lower still, until his gracile hand palmed Liquid’s cock. “This is.”

Liquid exhaled silently, watching Vamp’s tapered fingers play over the bulge in his jeans, feeling himself stiffen predictably.

Vamp leaned in, and his lips grazed Liquid’s ear as he spoke, the words spun out on the edges of his breath. “...I can do nothing about Him. This is all I can do for you.”

Liquid was still for a long moment. He felt something akin to a shifting beneath his skin, disparate parts coming together, coalescing into an unlikely whole. He reached up, sliding one hand up the back of Vamp’s neck, clenching his fingers in his hair. He felt Vamp’s muscles twitch against him, winding up tight at the barest suggestion of violence. It was an unconscious reaction, and one that Liquid had become accustomed to.

“Help me kill him,” he whispered, his lips against Vamp’s ear. “You know I could. I just need the opportunity.”

He felt another shudder run through Vamp’s body, and a hot hiss of his breath against the bend of his neck as Vamp let out a long exhalation. It took Liquid a long time to realize that the other man was laughing.

“I would like that very much,” Vamp said. “More than you know. And yet...”

“Is it because you think I can’t do it?” Liquid said. “Or is it something else?”

Vamp sighed, pulling away. Liquid supposed, not without some measure of selfish regret, that he had pretty well killed the moment.

“You’ll understand,” Vamp said. “When you see him.”

Then he reached up abruptly, stroking the fingers of one hand delicately along his jaw, activating the CODEC there. He half-turned, giving Liquid his elegant profile. He was quiet for a few seconds, listening, and then he turned back.

“It’s time.”

Liquid felt his insides knot up at the words. Vamp stepped towards him, and he briefly considered putting up a fight. He didn’t think he’d be able to do much damage, but it seemed like it might be his last chance to cry out against the injustice of the situation, to assert himself as more than just the sum of factors beyond his control. 

As if he became real only in the bruises he left.

In the end, though, he only turned and let Vamp cuff his wrists behind his back. It wasn’t Vamp’s fault. It wasn’t Solid Snake’s fault.

It was no one’s fault.

Vamp put the hood back on him. It seemed a rather futile gesture at this point, more for ceremony than for any practical reason. Liquid submitted to it easily. He had the feeling he would do well to conserve his strength. He was led through the cramped confines of the ship’s hold and up a flight of stairs, into sunlight so sudden and unexpected that Liquid’s skin crawled where it fell on him.

He could not, he realized then, remember the last time he had been outside.

Vamp felt him shudder and he ran a gloved hand over Liquid’s arm. He had misunderstood, and he was trying to comfort him. Liquid could have laughed, would have laughed if he wasn’t afraid of what might come out if he opened his mouth now.

After a moment the air above them came alive with rhythmic chopping. Liquid raised his head as if he could see, even though the hood was opaque. Force of habit, he supposed.

“We’re going by helicopter?”

“Why, yes,” said Vamp, with the velvety politesse of a foreign diplomat, or a five-star hotel concierge. “Undisclosed location, of course. Very, shall we say, hush-hush.”

“Sounds exclusive,” said Liquid, masking his apprehension behind a gallows drawl. “I suppose it stands to reason. They don’t do the kinds of things they did to me at just any spa.”

“Only the finest,” said Vamp. “And most discreet. You didn’t think He would be waiting at the gangplank with a lei, did you?”

Liquid hadn’t been sure what to think. With his sight obscured he was keenly aware of sound, sight and touch. The sun on his skin, and Vamp’s hand guiding him toward the slowing sound of the blades.

“Can I ask one thing?” said Liquid.

Vamp paused, and Liquid could almost feel the conflict in his body. “If it is within my powers to give.”

“Just make sure I don’t hit my head on the way in.”

“I give you my word, Frumosa,” Vamp said quietly. “After that…”

“I know,” said Liquid.

He felt Vamp’s hand rest solicitously on the back of his neck, guiding his head down. He was taking his job very seriously, but Liquid supposed he didn’t know how to do it any other way. They passed beneath the blades, which hummed dizzily over Liquid’s head. Then Vamp purred in his ear, “Step up.”

Liquid climbed into the helicopter in a single fluid motion. Some old trace of muscle memory had told him exactly how high to step so he didn’t stumble. He wondered what else his body still knew how to do.

Vamp thrust him into a seat, and a moment later Liquid felt the chopper lift off. His stomach dropped into his boots, though the ride was smooth, without a hint of turbulence. It must have been a very clear day, and the view was probably spectacular. Liquid regretted that he could not see it.

Though he was keenly aware that Vamp was still very close, he no longer spoke or tried to touch him. Liquid could imagine him, though. His stern, regal face impassive; his eyes slitted against the sun; his hair, perhaps, a little disheveled from passing beneath the helicopter blades.

Liquid kept the image in his mind. He liked it, and besides, it kept him from thinking of…

He tried to cut the notion off, force it back into that hidden place inside where it belonged. It was no use; it was already too late. Vamp kept him from thinking of Snake. His brother, who he knew he would never see again.

For the first time, Liquid was glad for the hood. It hid his face, and the expression that had undoubtedly flashed across it.

***

The ride was a short one. Less than an hour passed before Liquid felt the helicopter descending once more. They touched down, and Vamp helped him disembark. Once again, there was that gentle hand on the back of his neck, the rough caress of Vamp’s thumb against the pulse at the side of his throat. Liquid had felt it there dozens of times in the past few days, but he knew that it was different now.

Vamp guided him inside. Down a hallway where their footsteps echoed. Liquid tried to get his bearings using the senses that remained to him, but there seemed not a single sound besides the hum of the climate control unit, not a single smell save disinfectant, not a single thing to feel besides his own heart hammering in his breast.

Eventually, they stepped into an elevator. Liquid felt it descend for so long that he knew they must now be underground.

The temperature was dropping too, in that way particular to underground bunkers. He found that familiar, if not comforting. He supposed that was yet more proof that he had known all this and more in this former forgotten life, that he was the man his brother had claimed.

The man who deserved all this, perhaps. His stomach surged and knotted over twice.

He was led down another long hallway. Their footsteps clacked against what sounded like linotile, their rhythm falling into tandem and out again, much like their fucking had. Out of context the intrusive, unasked-for thought made Liquid both nauseous and aroused. The cognitive dissonance of that was unsettling.

“Not long now,” intoned Vamp, in what could not be a reassuring voice under the circumstances, but cut as close as the man was able. “Just a little further, _comoara mea_.”

He heard a door open in front of them, and he was steered through in front of Vamp, who held both his upper arms as if he were lining him up to face a pinata, or a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game at a birthday party.

Liquid faced whatever stood before him blindly, feeling his pulse increase and his breathing heighten. He felt Vamp’s hand come down firmly between his shoulder blades, but a man’s voice arrested him, sinuous and smooth.

“He doesn’t have to kneel. Where are your manners? Give our guest a chair, Vamp.”

Liquid felt Vamp’s nonverbal assent, heard the scrape of what sounded like a steelcase chair on composite or concrete. Was this the torture chamber he’d escaped? Were they to begin again?

The voice came again. “Let me see his eyes.”

The hood was removed. Though the light in the room was low, Liquid was left blinking against it. Slowly, his sight came back, and Liquid was confronted with a man he did not know. The stranger was dressed in a neat brown suit, tailored to his trim hips and the strong crossbar of his shoulder. The chambray shirt beneath was buttoned up to the throat. He wore a pair of leather gloves the color of ox blood. It was those, more than anything else, that caught Liquid’s attention.

He looked Liquid up and down, taking his time with it. Liquid couldn’t tell whether his eyes were dark or light, but he knew that, whatever the color, they were striking. He didn’t recognize the man’s face, at least not enough to put a name to it, but the longer he looked the more Liquid felt a creeping sense of dread. His testicles pulled up taut against his body and a chill hand seemed to touch the back of his neck.

Perhaps he did know him, he thought. And as soon as he had he was gripped by despair. They had been together before. In another subterranean room. A place with soundproof walls and no prying eyes; a place where things could happen to a man who had been forgotten…

Liquid shifted his bound hands. His fingers found the edge of the chair and he gripped it tightly.

“You look the same,” the stranger said. “You look just as I remember.”

He half turned to retrieve a glass of some amber liquid from the desk just behind him. The tail of his coat shifted, revealing a revolver strapped to his hip. He tipped the glass of whiskey and swallowed.

“Pour him a drink,” said a voice from the corner. Liquid jerked his head around to find the source. Too fast, it seemed, for his head swam and his vision warped like water over glass.

The second man stood, impressive in a dark suit and a conservative gray tie. He came forward a step and fixed his one good eye on Liquid, a stare that invited no contradiction and left no room for compromise.

“Do you know who I am, Liquid Snake?” he said.

Liquid swallowed. His throat was dry, and it took him a moment to work up enough spit to get the words out.

“You’re my father,” he said. “Aren’t you?”


	13. Chapter 13

“So, you remember the old man.” The stranger in the gray suit stepped forward slowly. Liquid felt the muscles in his shoulders ratcheting tighter and tighter with each step, but he did not flinch. It probably mattered very little if he did, though; an old dog like this could smell the fear on him. “That must be nice for you.”

He paused next to the big stainless steel desk that dominated the room. They were not in a cell as Liquid had first expected, but rather in a small but well-appointed office, done up in the clean and hard-lined style of European Modernism.

Two fresh glasses of whiskey appeared on the edge of the desk. The man who had spoken first, the one with the revolver, had poured them so quickly, with such efficient movements, that Liquid had not even been aware that he was doing it. The stranger in gray picked them up, and he nodded slightly to Vamp.

Liquid felt his wrists uncuffed. He wiped his damp palms on his thighs - surreptitiously, he hoped - and reached to accept the glass. He felt as if he needed it very badly at the moment.

“I’m not Big Boss,” the stranger said. “Not him, but of him. I’m your brother, if you believe the gossip. You can call me Solidus.”

“Solidus,” Liquid echoed. The act of forming the words did not trigger anything in his memory, but he didn’t expect anything less. This time, at least, the amnesia was comforting. “That’s cute.”

Solidus inclined his head slightly. “This is my associate, Revolver Ocelot. As I understand it, you’re already acquainted.”

Now that he was free, Liquid stood up. His legs felt shaky, but they held him all right. He grabbed the bottle of whiskey off the desk and poured himself another. He felt he was outside himself, watching the flamboyant flourish of his wrist when he tipped the shot into his mouth.

“What do you want, big brother?” Liquid said.

“There’s that fighting spirit I’ve heard so much about,” Solidus said. His eyes strayed to Vamp, a movement that Liquid caught but didn’t know what to do with. “You know, I watched you at Shadow Moses. Your performance was a little broad for my tastes, but it moved me. It was a battle you were never meant to win, and yet you fought it as if you did not realize that. There is nothing more noble than a man in conflict with himself. It’s the only battle that truly matters. All else are victories without spoils, or defeats where nothing of value is lost.”

“Shadow Moses,” Liquid echoed as if the name meant something to him. “That’s all in the past. Water under the barge.”

“You always did love poetic license.” Solidus laugh was throaty, abrupt. Liquid found it disquieting. From another man it would have been hearty, even life-affirming, but here there was only menace, rolling smoothly out from somewhere under the sound

He continued, “It’s not in the past. But perhaps, together, we can put it in the past. You see, I had you brought here to offer you a job, brother.”

“You had to kidnap me to do that?”

“Maybe not,” Solidus said. “But I gather you didn’t object to the company.”

Now they were both looking at Vamp. Or rather, all three of them were, since Ocelot seemed to have had an eye on him since he had entered. Vamp took the sudden scrutiny without flinching, almost as if he didn’t notice it at all.

“No,” Liquid said. “I suppose I didn’t mind that at all.”

“Good,” Solidus said. “Vamp is a kind of son to me. He does good work because he knows it makes his father proud.”

Ocelot stepped abruptly to Solidus’ side. He touched his sleeve, and when Solidus inclined his head Ocelot whispered something in his ear.

“Ah yes,” said Solidus, in the voice of one reminded of a matter of great import. “How was your visit with our brother? Quite a reunion, I imagine.”

Liquid felt a strange, low band of terror thread through him, just under his heart, different than the general fear he’d felt before, the one he’d felt ever since he’d been unblinded and thrust into the clinical presence of these grey and terrifying men.

“Our brother,” he said, drawing out the word with casual and studied indifference, and he was stunned that he could imbue the word with such insouciance when his heart was pounding in all directions, in polyrhythmic dread like a nightmare kettledrum. “What a boring question. I must say we’ve really nothing in common. Hardly like a brother at all. I don’t suppose he’s sorry to be rid of me.”

Solidus stared at him. “You shouldn’t call it a kidnapping, you know. It wasn’t that at all. Solid Snake was the one who kidnapped you—Solid Snake and that little four-eyed shit-stain Emmerich. This was a rescue. Or at least a recovery. What would you call it—?”

“Salvage,” intoned Ocelot, with narrowed eyes and extra sibilance.

“A rose by any other name,” said Vamp, and his eyes met Liquid’s for a bare moment, something flashing between them, at least he thought perhaps—before Vamp’s gaze went blank once more and the fearful symmetry of his face returned to being mere art among the rest.

“Indeed, Adrian.” Solidus eyed him for a moment, looking amused. “We could argue semantics all day, couldn’t we, Ocelot?”

Ocelot smirked, wordless. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. It was a leisurely act, the motion of a predator content to wait.

“When we realized you were alive and well, of course we hurried to retrieve you.” Solidus paused, smiling broadly. “We didn’t find out right away. If it wasn’t for Ocelot here just happening to check up on your body late one night, we’d surely have never known you were gone. Not until it was too late.”

“It’s never too late,” said Ocelot.

Liquid’s eyes drifted toward him involuntarily. The man’s eyes were silver-dollar cold and gleaming, like Lee Van Cleef’s. His own gaze slid off the surface of those eyes, and he felt the cold sinking into him, settling in the marrow of his bones like frost.

He realized he didn’t want to know what dark impulse drove Revolver Ocelot to check up on his corpse ‘late one night’, apropos of nothing, apparently—no order, no directive—but merely his own whim or desire.

Liquid took a fortifying sip of liquor, letting it burn false courage into him. “So you rescued me from Solid Snake, and you brought me here, to your IKEA office diorama.”

Behind Solidus’ back, Revolver Ocelot’s cruel mouth barely suppressed a smile. “Dania,” he said, in a colorless tone.

Solidus chuckled, but again, Liquid felt no reassurance.“We couldn’t have someone as special, as singular as you, keeping company with the likes of the flawed and common, could we?”

“Not in good conscience,” murmured Ocelot.

“The genetic refuse that calls itself Solid Snake—he’s not like you or I, little brother. He’s a glitch, a lapse, a dropped stitch. Perhaps it makes an intriguing and chaotic pattern, but ultimately it’s unsound and without true function. Do you follow?”

“Big Boss didn’t see it that way,” Liquid said. He didn’t know where the name came from, why he remembered it now. It seemed dredged up from within some deep well inside of him, a place beyond conscious recollection, where only instinct dwelled.

“Big Boss is dead,” Solidus said flatly. For a moment, a terrible darkness showed in the pit of his politician’s eye, but it was eclipsed almost at once. “The world no longer needs nor wants men like him. What the world needs is men of character, exceptional men who aren’t afraid to make the tough decisions. Men who know what’s best, and who aren’t afraid to rub the noses of the all cringing, craven little shits out there in it.”

“Men like us,” Liquid said.

Solidus smiled unpleasantly. “Something like that.”

“Somehow I don’t think you consider me your equal, brother,” Liquid said. “You seem to know me so well, you certainly don’t expect me to toady up to you like a good little soldier, do you? I must admit, you’ve assembled quite the impressive menagerie of freaks to spit-shine your boots for you, but I have no intention of being one of them.”

Liquid longed to reach for the bottle of whiskey again, but he was afraid of betraying how much his hands trembled. He was well aware that he might be talking himself right back into that place he had been before Dave had come for him, but he couldn’t stop himself. He knew that the man speaking was the man he had been in that forgotten past spoken about only in whispers and insinuation, and it frightened him almost as much as Solidus did.

“That wasn’t quite what we had in mind,” Ocelot said.

“He’s right,” Solidus continued blithely. “You’ve forgotten where you came from. And you’ve come to neglect all that transpired to make you what you are. It takes more than a good pedigree to make a champion dog, after all.”

Solidus’ hand snapped out, so quickly that Liquid almost couldn’t follow it. He seized Liquid’s wrist is an unforgiving grip, and Liquid felt the prick of a needle against his skin.

“We’re here to help you remember, James.”

The compound Solidus had injected him with worked fast. Liquid’s knees were already unhinging, he was already swooning, and yet he had time to seize upon that final word with the last of his fading strength.

James. That was his name.


	14. Chapter 14

“I think I found something.” Otacon’s voice was gleeful, like when he found a wayward Cheeto.

“Good for you.” Snake glowered. He was cleaning his guns. He told himself it was just general maintenance, but in gut and core he knew the truth. He’d need them soon. Best to have them primed and ready.

“Snake, I’m serious.” Otacon spun around in his computer chair. “I’ve think I’ve got a line on where they might have taken him. Your brother.” He straightened his glasses. “By golly, it’s a decent shot, anyhow.”

“That thing is not my brother.”

“Hold on, Liquid Snake,” said Otacon said in a sing-song voice, ignoring him. “We are coming for you…”

“We are not coming for you,” corrected Snake. “We’re staying right here. It’s Thai night. We’re going to eat panang curry and watch Universal Soldier four, like we do every Thursday.”

Otacon stared at him for a long moment, like a petulant kid. “But you promised.”

“I didn’t promise anything,” muttered Snake, knowing he was splitting hairs. “I just stopped arguing.”

“Same difference,” said Otacon, under his breath. He turned back to the screen. Its glow washed over his mushroom-white skin; worlds of code reflected in his lenses.

“I don’t get why you’re so gung-ho to bring this guy back home. He’s not a lost puppy, Otacon. He’s a murder machine, and a master manipulator. You’re acting like you’re sweet on him or something.”

Otacon muttered something Snake couldn’t quite make out.

“What was that?” Snake said with a dangerous edge to his voice. He got gruff with Otacon a lot, but he still had a tone he could take when he wanted his partner to know he meant business. Otacon usually backed down when Snake used it, and he had deployed it to end more than one argument in the past.

This time, though, Otacon spun back around in his chair and looked him in the eye. “I’m not the one who kissed him,” he said, enunciating each word.

Snake carefully snapped the slide lock back onto his gun. “I thought you weren’t going to mention that again.”

“I didn’t say that,” Otacon replied primly. “I just stopped arguing about it.”

“Damnit, Hal!” Snake was on his feet in an instant, the gun he’d just finished reassembling clenched in his fist. Otacon did not so much as flinch, which was about the last thing Snake had expected from him. He just watched mildly while Snake blustered, like he would watch a little boy throwing a tantrum.

“I’m going out,” Snake said. He shoved the gun into the waistband of his jeans and pulled the tail of his shirt over it. “I’m going for a walk.”

“It’s obvious you have unresolved issues regarding your brother,” Otacon said. “You won’t be able to move on until you do something about it.”

“I have unresolved issues with your face,” Snake said.

“That was uncalled for,” said Otacon.

“What do you want from me, Hal?” Snake’s voice was low, almost resigned. After a moment he shook his head. “I did it, all right? I did it, and I regret it. It was an impulse, and I followed it, because he was losing fucking cohesion and I didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes, in war…”

Otacon was silent. His eyes were obscured behind his glasses, unreadable. Dave had never thought of Hal as enigmatic, but at the moment he was doing a credible impression.

“We…We never had a natural bond, okay?” Snake ran his hands through his hair, sitting down on the couch. He stared at his boots, eyed their scuffed leather. “We never had that thing—that thing, what do they call it? The Westermark Effect. We never even met until…” He cast about for a beat, remembering the helicopter flight. Blond hair and broad shoulders, seen from a distance. Even then, he’d known. “Until we were both men.”

Hal frowned. After a moment he took off his glasses and cleaned them with the same cloth Snake had seen him use on his monitor. “Do you know what he said about it?” he asked, in a low voice, studiously avoiding Snake’s gaze.

Snake’s brow creased. This was costing Otacon something in the coin of mortification. His cheeks were bright pink and white. “No,” he ground out, and stared at Hal expectantly. “Do I want to?”

“He said that you were gentle.” Otacon’s words were quiet, halting, but proceeded nonetheless. “That you were good at it.” He rubbed his glasses harder. “Like you knew exactly what he needed.”

Snake stared. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Thoughts crossed his mind like tiny eclipses and died before they could cross the threshold of his lips.

In the absence of a reply, Otacon went on. “He said he was glad you came for him.” His fingers, furiously polishing, slowed. He didn’t dare venture a glance at Dave. “Like brothers are supposed to do.”

Snake was silent, his jaw set. It seemed inconceivable to him that Otacon could be telling the truth, and equally inconceivable that he might be lying. No, Snake thought, not lying. But oversimplifying things in that way that he did, the way all people who didn’t have to make hard choices, who only got to sit back and critique them, did.

Liquid had been wrong, or at least not exactly right. Snake hadn’t come for him because they were brothers. It had been because he knew how easily their positions might have been reversed. How easily it could have been him in that lab, and Liquid loose in the world, untethered by allegiance to any country.

He would not have done the same, Snake thought vindictively, but even as the notion settled satisfactorily into his mind, he was recalling Shadow Moses. Liquid had been with him then, on the other end of Snake’s CODEC. He’d played the role of Miller to the hilt, perhaps too well. Snake well-recalled the things he had said: how to survive and what it meant to do so.

Liquid had come for him then. Perhaps without even realizing it or meaning to.

Snake’s hands slowly knotted into fists at his sides. “I’m still going out,” he said slowly. He needed to smoke without Otacon shooting him concerned looks. “Not for long. And I’ll be back.”

Otacon half-lifted his head. He looked at Snake side-long, without meeting his eye. “All right, Dave.”

Snake climbed out the window and went down the fire escape. He didn’t want to take the elevator, to be at the mercy of something else’s machinations. He wanted autonomy in that moment, above all else. 

He ringed his way down, boots hardly sounding on the grate. Sneaking was second nature. He carried the battlefield with him and always would. Reaching the end of the wrought iron flights he grabbed the last rung and lowered his body, letting himself hang and then drop down into the alley, rather than pulling down the ladder.

That was good. Physical activity cleared the mind, scoured out thoughts and obsessions. Left a clean slate. A cigarette would smoke out the rest. It occurred to him that maybe those two impulses were at odds. That maybe one of them would have to give way, eventually.

He tried to remember if Liquid smoked. If he’d ever seen him with a cigarette, or if this was a vice that was his alone, another thing they didn’t share. It seemed incongruous to Liquid’s hybrid vigor, his natural, unstudied way of flinging his arms out to embrace life with the fierce hunger of an organism who would never stop fighting. Never undermine that primal drive. Never commit slow suicide.

Above all, Liquid wanted life. Body, mind and soul.

The thought made Snake grimace, settling hard in the muscles of his face like lead. He tapped out a smoke and lit it with his Zippo, loitering in the alley like a juvenile delinquent. When the tip caught and the cherry glowed, he took a deep drag with a pained expression.

He recalled that day in the shower, how something beyond thought had galvanized him. Something ingrained, maybe. Some epigenetic affinity being expressed, triggered by the moment. A compassion he’d never known, on an intercellular level, for the man who now called himself his brother.

Whether Liquid would have done the same once maybe was no longer the question. Maybe the question was, would Liquid do the same now?

He let a volley of blue smoke apathetically escape his parted lips. The idea of fraternity was harrowing enough, but he could at least rationalize that. The possibility that he might have been acting out of something beyond brotherhood alarmed him in a way that few things could anymore.

If he was honest, hadn’t he admired Liquid Snake at first glance? Hadn’t he approved of his face and physique, on that initial visceral level? Liquid was engineered to evoke awe, after all. Just like Snake himself.

No, it couldn’t be that. Snake was willing to concede that he had pitied Liquid, in the moment when he had been his most vulnerable. Snake was no stranger to that. Frank, Wolf, Naomi - hell, even Hal. He had been able to treat them all with sympathy, simply because he knew their strength was not equal to his own.

Liquid had needed him and he had done what needed to be done. He didn’t love that narrative, but he could live with it. Anything else was just false memories.

Snake dropped the cigarette and ground it out under his boot. He’d only smoked half, but there was a strange taste in his mouth, like something had gone off.

He headed for the mouth of the alley, knowing he couldn’t go back yet. Otacon would expect an answer. Snake supposed he already knew what it would be, but he wasn’t ready to say it yet. Let Otacon think that he was an asshole. It was certainly preferable to the truth: that Snake was scared to death of being under the same roof as his brother again.

The street was crowded. In the real world, the universe that ran parallel to the one Snake inhabited, people were just getting off work. A few of them spared him glances. One of the most unnerving parts of moving among civilians was reminding himself that when they looked at his body it was almost always out of interest in or appreciation of his raw physicality, rather than because they were sizing him up.

It was one of those things he’d never managed to get Otacon to wrap his brain around. Hal moved so inconsequentially through the world outside of the purely cerebral that he thought any kind of attention was positive.

Snake had only made it partway down the block when he noticed something else, a fresh current rising out of the sea of background sensations. Someone was watching him. Not with the mild appreciation or envy that he had come to expect, but with real and genuine interest, tracking him movements like a predator to prey.

The next step carried Snake off the sidewalk and into a doorway. He took out his cigarettes again and lit one, moving slowly without looking like he was stalling. His eyes scanned the street.

Snake was adept at picking out cryptic forms from a chaotic backdrop, the bare glint of a sniper’s rifle, the subtle suggestion of humanoid morphology among the many textures of a scene.

There. In a scarcely hooded alley, almost aligned with the edge of the wall. That was a man, and his face was ever-so-slightly turned, his eyes ever-so-slightly inclined in Snake’s general direction.

Snake’s eyes narrowed as he moved forward, at a casual diagonal. For the first few steps he pretended to be oblivious, taking a drag, glancing away down the street as if he were lost in thought. The man held his ground, eerily still, not yet sensing that he’d been seen. No doubt presuming that Snake would walk on past, and he could resume his shadowing activities.

When Snake was two-thirds of the way across the street he threw down his cigarette all at once and increased his strides, making a beeline for the mouth of the alley. The man reacted fast. Too fast, Snake thought vaguely, as he broke into a run. No ordinary man, then.

“You,” he ground out, on the edges of his breath.

He caught a glimpse of long hair, like a black banner. The man’s movements were unnaturally swift and sure as he fled down the alley in a careless zigzag; almost balletic. He vaulted a chain link fence at the back and was gone.

Snake didn’t bother giving chase. Instead, he turned and started back towards the Philanthropy loft. He wasn’t running, but he was moving very quickly, weaving in and out of the press of pedestrians. He slipped his phone out of his pocket and called Otacon.

“Dave?”

“Hal, I’m on my way home,” Snake said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t open up for anyone until I get there.”

“Even the delivery guy?” Otacon fumbled. “Snake, is something going on?”

“No,” Snake said. “Everything is fine.”

He hung up the phone and picked up the pace. Back at the loft, he jammed on the button, but he knew already that there was no need to hurry. The man he had seen on the street had never had any intention of coming back here.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for this chapter only: Graphic non-con and torture. We are giving it to you along with these stock options for future warm snuggles which we promise will pay handsome dividends in the future.

Liquid didn’t know how much time passed down there in that dark place beneath the earth. They kept him drugged, fattening him up like Hansel and Gretel on a potent cocktail that kept him physically weak and disoriented but rarely let him lose himself in the dreamy corridors of semi-consciousness. His cell was a windowless box, lit with a fluorescent bulb that burned day and night. There was a grate in the ceiling, like the kind that hooked up to a central air system, but no air blew through it. That didn’t stop the vent beyond from clanking and howling at random intervals. If he was asleep when it started up, Liquid snapped awake, his heart pounding and a cold sheen of sweat already livid on his brow.

He knew what was happening, and how powerless he was to stop it. First they had deprived him of sleep, and then, when he had lost sight of himself and could no longer fight, the real work began.

Liquid did not bother to try to count the days. Food was slipped through an anonymous slot in the door. Since he frequently felt hungry but rarely ever starved, his best guess was that they fed him twice every 24 hours. He could taste the drugs in his food, but he ate it anyway. If he didn’t, they would just find another way.

It was all to break him. Every moment lovingly considered and crafted. Every neglect and every assault. There were no mistakes, and no omissions.

Now and then the bare bulb was turned off. It was always a relief—at first. But then he was left alone for hours on end in amorphous darkness, in a space neither hot nor cold, neither here nor there, neither real nor unreal. He knew there were four walls, but by the time the light buzzed back to life again he had ceased to believe in them. He was adrift in space, alone, never to be found. _Sensory deprivation and solitary confinement leads to a sense of oblivion and depersonalization_. He mouthed the words to himself, because there was no sound in space. Liquid knew the tactic, even if he couldn’t completely remember how he knew. 

And then there were the other hours, where the man named Revolver Ocelot called all too often. That made oblivion feel like nirvana.

This was one of those hours.

“You were scheduled to stay in contemplation for some time,” Ocelot was saying, as he brushed Liquid’s hair back from his brow with a finely gloved hand. “But I couldn’t stay away. I was beginning to miss your face.”

Liquid said nothing. He knew Ocelot could carry on a monologue just fine. His hair was damp and dark gold at the temples and brow from the hard perspiration that came with tension and fear and anguish. He did not shudder as the backs of Ocelot’s tapered, artisan-like fingers traced his features with something that felt wholly unholy, something he could have almost called tenderness.

Shuddering was a waste of what little strength remained to him. He would save it for what was surely to come, when he could no longer suppress the autonomic response.

At the worst moments, his thoughts had often drifted to the Philanthropy loft; the warm light and cozening darkness, the safe harbor of warm showers and blankets and healing sleep. He thought of Hal and his awkward but earnest hospitality. And he thought of Solid Snake. He clung to the thought of him in his darkest moments, whether lost in a sea of pain or anchored at the bottom of an ocean of blackness.

At least he’d had that much, once. Now even those days were becoming harder to recall, to invoke, as his mind was slowly broken by Ocelot, with no more misgiving or difficulty than a gleeful child stepping on a seashell.

The only time he wept was when he realized that Ocelot’s deprogramming was taking more than his freedom, his body and his mind. He was taking his brother away from him. The brother he’d barely been allowed to have: a thought he’d been allowed to hold in his palm, but never got to close his fingers over.

He knew now that even if he had, Ocelot would have pried them open.

He knew now. He knew so many things, now.

“You’re not listening,” Ocelot chided. Liquid had not been, for long hours of isolation had made it difficult to focus on anything for more than a few minutes. All of Ocelot’s words overlapped one another, and all his features blurred together into a single impressionistic tableau.

It wouldn’t be long until he could no longer tell anything apart. Not even his own will from the will of those myriad and mysterious forces that manipulated him. That moment would come soon enough, but until it did Liquid fought it. Blindly, desperately, and without any hope of winning, he fought it.

“Was I supposed to?” he rasped. “Old men love to hear themselves talk.”

The corner of Ocelot’s mouth quirked into a smile. He pushed up out of a crouch, his knees creaking as he straightened them. Liquid took cold comfort in the sound. Even Revolver Ocelot was no longer the smooth, well-oiled machine he had been engineered to be. Perhaps all this effort was being expanded in the service of unwittingly training his own replacement.

“I’m simply mortified to hear that our time together bores you,” Ocelot said. “Fortunately, I’ve arranged for a diversion to break the monotony.”

He moved to the door. The tiny cell was only four paces across, and Liquid heard Ocelot’s spurs click four times as he moved, a sound that seemed to clip off almost as soon as it had been made.

Ocelot opened the door, just a crack. He wasn’t worried about Liquid using the opportunity to run for it, but he did want to deny him even that fleeting, stolen glance of what freedom might look like.

“We’re ready,” he said. “You can come in.”

Liquid forced himself to sit up, even though he needed to prop himself against the wall to do so for any prolonged length of time. He lifted his eyes to meet whatever this new challenge might be. 

Vamp stepped inside, turning his broad body sideways to fit through the crack Ocelot had left between the door and frame. It was barely wide enough for a dog to squeeze through, but Vamp managed it somehow. 

Once he was inside and the door was shut and sealed once more, Liquid laughed roughly. “There’s hardly enough room to swing a dead cat with all three of us in here. I’m afraid we’re going to have to get cozy.” 

He fixed his gaze boldly on Vamp. “Or was that the idea, Adrian.”

“Not my idea,” Vamp replied tersely.

“Now, now,” Ocelot said. “I would hate for Solidus to find out you weren’t being a team player.”

Vamp shot him a hard look, sidewise and knifelike. He was not afraid of Ocelot, Liquid realized. Not in the way he feared Solidus. Liquid wondered why, and what must have conditioned such an acute response. Perhaps Vamp was no less of a champion dog than he to these men. He felt a strange bloom of compassion and marveled that he was able to feel anything at all. He savored it for a moment, like a respite, even though the taste was bittersweet.

“I understand,” Liquid said, momentarily emboldened by the surge of actual emotion. “You know about the boat, because you know everything, don’t you? He gave me warmth and comfort once, so now you’ll have him beat me.” He remembered Vamp’s knives. “Or cut me, perhaps. It only makes sense. It’s what I’d do, if I were you.”

His pale eyes sought Vamp’s, holding fast. “Whatever he makes you do,” he whispered, “I absolve you.”

Ocelot smiled and Vamp looked distinctly stricken. 

“Is that what you’d do,” drawled Ocelot. “I’m surprised--and a little insulted--that you think I’d be so pedestrian. So uncreative.” He pulled out his gun and spun the chamber idly. “There are many ways to bring agony, Son of Big Boss.”

He liked saying that name, Liquid thought. Liked saying it even more than his own, if that were possible.

“Sometimes agony comes from ecstasy. Don’t you agree, Vamp?”

Vamp had moved forward, and now he took Liquid by the arms. Arms of pure muscle that still looked like a young god’s, but that, Liquid knew, no longer had a young god’s strength. He was beaten and battered, inside and out.

“ _Frumos_ ,” began Vamp, “ _comoara mea_ \--”

“Stop speaking that ugly mongrel tongue,” Ocelot broke in. “And get on with it.”

“I will obey,” snapped Vamp, “but I will do it in my own time.”

Ocelot sighed, toying with his gun. “You know what he’ll do if he hears you’ve been...obstinate.”

Vamp seized Liquid’s hair and yanked his head back, then kissed him hard on the mouth. He was bruised and it hurt, but apart from that he felt nothing. It was a dull realization. Again he felt a sense of crushing loss, a paler form of what he’d felt about losing Solid Snake.

He felt one of Vamp’s hands jerk the waistband of his pants, the only garment allowed him in his concrete cage. “Take them off,” snarled Vamp, harshly--more harshly than Liquid had ever heard him speak, his voice no longer like spread satin, but like velvet that had been rubbed rough and wrong against the grain.

Even as he said it, Vamp’s fingers wound into his hair with a gentleness that belied his tone. Somehow Liquid felt stirred by that minute gesture stirred. He felt a seed of arousal, even though it seemed Vamp was desperate to spare him such an indignity.

And he realized what Vamp had been told to do.

He pitied Vamp for having to do such a thing. Liquid could do nothing for himself. The only thing he could do for Vamp--for Adrian--was to make it easy on him. He stripped off his pants and stood there, body exposed before Revolver Ocelot’s strangely hungry eyes. It wasn’t the first time. He knew it was not the last. They seemed to search him, drink him in, like a man starving for a glimpse of his homeland, making do with picture books.

“Where?” he said, calm and colorless.

Vamp cast about for a moment. “The floor,” he bit out, at last.

“Fine,” said Liquid, quietly. He somehow knew he’d taken worse. That knowledge, however vague, gave him comfort.

He turned his back and Vamp shoved him down with a vicious hand. He fell forward, hands and knees against hard concrete. It was cold and rough and sobering. He felt a sudden clearing of the haze that lingered in his head.

Ocelot was watching with narrowed eyes. “Not like that. Do it like you mean it, Vamp.” He paused, tilting his head. “Otherwise it won’t hurt as much, will it?”

Vamp said something in his native language that sounded like a curse.

“What was that?” Ocelot said. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

“It will hurt very much,” Vamp ground out. “Enough even to satisfy you.”

“We’ll see,” Ocelot said. He circled them slowly, in the little room afforded to him by the cramped cell.

Liquid felt a horrible weight settle on his back, crushing the air out of him. Vamp’s unsheathed cock pressed against the inside of his thigh.

“You can’t expect to get anywhere like that,” Ocelot said. “I had heard so much of your vitality, Vamp. They said you had an inexhaustible well of stamina.”

Vamp sucked in air between his teeth, a sharp hiss of frustration. His hand closed around his shaft and he stroked himself. The backs of his knuckles scraped against Liquid’s ass as he stroked himself hard.

Liquid tried to will himself to disassociate. He thought back to the ship, where he and Adrian had been happy, or at least had felt something akin to happiness. If he could only recall it in exact detail, then it would be almost like being back there again. But after so long in solitary, with nothing to stimulate his mind, his imagination was not up to the task. All he knew was the bite of the concrete against his palms, the blood pooling in his mouth from his bitten lip. Vamp’s cold and impersonal touch on the small of his back where once his fingers had passed with tender sympathy.

“Would that it did not have to be like this,” Ocelot said. His gaze never wavered from them; Liquid could feel his eyes like two chips of ice left to melt against his skin. “It’s a bit on the nose, you might say. But sometimes a man has to accept a project he doesn’t care for in order to get the resources to take on the projects he loves.”

Liquid gritted his teeth. He knew that Ocelot had no intention of shutting up, of letting them forget his presence there even for a moment. Vamp’s erection rubbed up against the cleft of his ass, pushing against him without entering, giving him a moment to steel himself.

“That’s fine,” Ocelot said sharply. “That’s a good boy, indeed. Now, do it.”

Vamp thrust in like an involuntary action, like a leg kicking after the knee is struck with a hammer. Liquid cried out, less out of pain than from the suddenness of the intrusion. Which was not to say, upon reflection, that it did not hurt a great deal.

Ocelot’s breath quickened slightly. 

“Perhaps you really don’t remember,” he said. “But you were a prisoner once. You were only 18 at the time. That’s truly a malleable age, you know. The brain has not finished developing fully. Boys that young are very impressionable. You were a different person when you came out of that place. A man who understood the cost of failure, and who would do anything to avoid it. That’s what we need from you. Not a dog after all, but a man who understands his position.”

Liquid forced himself to focus on Ocelot’s words; his loathsome, languid delivery. Vamp felt impossibly large and raw inside him; he clenched his teeth against the the brutal ache that forced him apart, stealing his breath. It seemed impossible to believe that this was not the first time, but the old man seemed to be implying they’d been through all of this before.

Old hat, for Ocelot.

“All the way,” Ocelot barked. “To the hilt. Don’t you dare pull any punches, Adrian.”

His sneer caressed the syllables of the man’s name like a filthy thought. Liquid could feel the tension in Vamp’s body, in the fronts of his thighs, the barest perceptible shudder of thwarted anger. He felt a hard shove and a blinding moment of pain as Vamp obeyed.

Liquid’s arms felt weak and his head light, and he recognized the onset of shock. It was the same feeling he’d had in the Philanthropy loft. PTSD, Hal had said. Or PBT. Now he thought it was probably both, and much, much more. Liquid was beginning to think that there weren’t enough letters in the alphabet to make an acronym for this kind of damaged. He wondered if Snake would understand, if he could see him now, or if he would shun him even more.

“Now that you’re in the saddle, get to it,” Ocelot said on the hard edges of his breath. “There’s only one way to break a stallion. Ride him hard. And don’t get off until he knows who his master is.”

Liquid felt a swing of nausea as Vamp started to move inside him. His cock pumped in and out like a piston, but dry and without the ease of motion. He overrode physics with sheer force, eyes ahead, like a beast with blinders on. There was something mechanical about it, the perfunctory violence, done only to appease. His hips worked in a punishing rhythm. Each thrust felt like a dagger.

Liquid himself utter a guttural groan, halting syllables dragged out like a string of broken pearls. He wondered if he’d made the same involuntary noise when they’d broken his bones, or if even that had not deep enough of a pain to pull such unearthly sounds from the pit of his being.

“Turn him over,” Ocelot said, and this time there was no hesitation on Vamp’s part. He grabbed Liquid by the hips and flipped him on to his back. For a moment, his hands and knees left the floor and he was aloft, a brief and painful reminder of Vamp’s uncanny strength, hijacked in the service of another master.

Liquid came down hard on his back. His head lolled back and cracked against the concrete. For an instant, he saw lights. When they cleared , Vamp was looking down on him, his eyes unreadable, his hair like terrible wings around his face.

He thrust in again, without hesitation or mercy. Another short, sharp cry was wrenched from Liquid’s throat. Vamp grabbed him by the hips, tilting them back so he could drive his cock in deep.

Liquid lifted his hand, pressing his trembling palm against the side of Vamp’s face. “It’s all right,” he whispered. Triplet ribbons of blood appeared on Vamp’s cheek. Liquid had scratched at the concrete so hard that his nails had broken off at the quick. “Somehow it doesn’t hurt so much when it’s you.”

Vamp slowed, lifting his gaze so his eyes met Liquid’s. Liquid forced his teeth to unclench, forced his numb lips to move. He felt a warm bubble of blood burst at the corner of his mouth and trickle down his cheek.

“It’s not your fault,” he managed. “It’s not you.”

Ocelot stepped forward. Though Liquid tracked his every movement out of the corner of his eye, when Ocelot’s gun came out of the holster it was so quick he almost couldn’t follow it at all.

The barrel of the revolver pressed against Vamp’s temple. Vamp didn’t flinch from it, but he jerked his head as if he were troubled by a fly. His hair caught on the raised forward sight and fanned out in a translucent veil.

“That’s quite enough pillow talk,” Ocelot said. He dragged the barrel of the gun down the sharp line of Vamp’s jaw, pressing it briefly against the corner of his mouth so it left a faint red kiss-mark on his skin.

“Perhaps we can find another use for that mouth besides sweet talk,” Ocelot said. He took Liquid by the hair, twisting his hand so blond locks knitted over and under his fingers painfully.

“Do it already,” Liquid said. He felt resigned, even peaceful; he no longer blamed Ocelot, for he knew that for all the old man’s skill at placing himself in the proximity of power, he had almost never had any say himself in the things that happened. Ocelot had lived a long time, long enough to become obsolete, a fact which he knew better than anyone.

Ocelot jerked Liquid’s head forward and then slammed it back into the floor. Liquid couldn’t say if it had been his words that set the man off, or if he had seen something in his eyes at that moment, something that had stirred a long-dormant emotion.

He pushed the barrel of his revolver against Liquid’s lips. It squeaked against his teeth as Ocelot pried them open and forced the gun inside.

Liquid felt the same odd calm. He knew Ocelot would never pull the trigger. He hadn’t been authorized to pull the trigger. This was valuable capital he was reconditioning in his basement workshop. That rendered the gun a mere object, neither more nor less nefarious than anything else. Impotent of its intended function. He felt no fear of Ocelot’s ancient weapon; it could only perform this dull and interminable intrusion. It was an inconvenience, no more.

The muzzle of the gun was cold and metallic on his tongue. It slid in and out of his mouth with an odd, caressing finesse that came from Ocelot’s gifted wrist, toying with the confines of the space, rarely plunging deep enough to make him choke. Ocelot was leaning forward, a feverish excitement in his eyes.

Liquid watched as if from a great distance. He realized that this must be the part of him that made him the man everyone claimed him to be. Able to withstand the unimaginable and stagger up again, intent upon purpose. Dauntless; unstoppable. He felt an odd surge of arrogant defiance. He turned his eyes toward Ocelot and took the weapon deep into his throat, made a wanton display of himself.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vamp grimace.

Ocelot watched him, his pale gaze hard and startled. For a beat the gun went slack in his hand.

“Do you see Big Boss?” Liquid whispered, pulling his head back. “Why use the gun? Can’t trust your other weapon?”

The pain from Vamp’s thrusting was as reliable as a metronome, but beyond that it ceased to have meaning. By now survival endorphins had blunted the worst and most acute of the agony, and Liquid knew he could suffer as long as he had to.

“Maybe they don’t even make bullets for that model anymore,” Liquid murmured. “Maybe they don’t even make blanks.”

“They don’t make them like Big Boss, either.” Ocelot’s voice was soft and vicious as ground glass, and Liquid knew he’d hit a chink in the old man’s duster. “Though they keep trying.”

Liquid laughed sharply. “Were you always this funny?”

A reluctant smile creased Ocelot’s face, dark but not really ominous. “Welcome back, Liquid Snake. I daresay we’ve missed you.”

Between the jerking veils of his hair, Vamp looked strangely alarmed. He put his head down, obscuring his eyes. Liquid was reminded of a child hiding from closet monsters by pulling all of his limbs under the blankets.

Ocelot pulled the revolver back with a flourish, spinning it loosely before holstering it again.

“I think that’s enough for now, Vamp.”

Vamp jerked away, pulling out so fast that it coaxed one last hiss of surprised pain from Liquid. While Vamp retreated quickly, his hands flying over his clothes to put them back into some semblance of order, Liquid raised himself on his hands. He shook his hair back and spit a gob of blood onto the concrete.

“You like it when I fight back,” Liquid said, his eyes fixed on Ocelot, who did not look away even for a moment. “It’s better like that, isn’t it? You can imagine it as a game, where both of us have agreed upon the stakes and we both know the rules.”

“You know me too well, kid,” Ocelot said. He motioned with his head for Vamp to make for the door, and then he turned sharply on his heels and followed him out. The sound of the bolt sliding back into place seemed to come from a long way off.

Once he was alone, Liquid got to his feet. He shook out his trousers and slipped them back on. One leg at a time, he thought, and he almost laughed.

He felt he had an abundance of nervous energy to expend, and so he walked the length of the cell a few times, back and forth. The sharp stabbing pain in the small of his back quickly settled into a uniform burn. No permanent damage, he thought. Just a temporary inconvenience, a tight spot for all of them.

Liquid sat down hard on the edge of the wooden slab that served as his bunk. It was only when he reached up to touch his face some time later that he realized his cheeks were damp with tears.


	16. Chapter 16

Almost as soon as Ocelot had gone, Liquid realized that he knew what would happen next. He would be given several blissful days of peace and quiet, long enough to heal up, to begin to feel grateful for his respite, and then to come to dread when it would all start up again. This, too, he knew. The intense terror of anticipation, the feeling that was almost relief when they just got it over with already…

With that in mind, he stretched out on the wooden slab and slung his arm over his face to block out the light. He could still feel the dull ache in the small of his back, a humiliating burn that seemed to be working itself deeper into his bones by the moment. There was something he ought to be feeling, he thought, something he ought to be doing. But it eluded him, like a name on the tip of his tongue.

The bolt rattled in the door. Liquid sat up, blinking against the naked fluorescent light. It seemed almost no time had passed at all, and Liquid wondered if they were to begin again so soon. Perhaps Ocelot had forgotten something, and he had returned to deliver one last parting shot of agony before leaving Liquid to his thoughts

Whatever he had in mind, Liquid no longer felt horror at the thought, only a kind of weary and disdainful fear.

Ocelot stepped inside the cell, and Liquid knew from the first glance that he did not have malice on his mind. His expression was blank, his eyes blanker still, betraying none of the kid in a candy store eagerness they did when he was authorized to mete out pain to his favorite subject.

“You just couldn’t stay away, could you?” Liquid drawled. He realized that he was no longer affecting carelessness, but actually living and breathing it. Whatever happened now, it mattered very little.

Ocelot tossed a cloth across the room, into Liquid’s lap. “Blindfold yourself. We’re going for a stroll.”

Liquid picked up the rag and looked it over. It had the grease spots and tatters of an old kitchen towel. “Is this really necessary?”

Ocelot folded his arms and said nothing, and Liquid wrapped the blindfold around his eyes. He considered leaving it loose enough to see out, but he suspected Ocelot would know if he did.

“Get up,” Ocelot said, when Liquid had finished tying the blindfold in back. He let Liquid out into the hallway, and guided him with the barest of touches on the back of his shoulder, his fingertips skating along the skin so lightly that Liquid could not even feel the flesh beneath his leather gloves.

“You never did like being touched,” Liquid said. “Not hugged enough as a child?”

“Quiet,” Ocelot said.

“I wonder how you and my old man managed,” Liquid continued blithely. “Was it different with him? Or did you just lie back and think of Mother Russia? Did he like that?”

Liquid heard the sharp hiss of Ocelot’s gun leaving its holster, but he didn’t have time to react before the butt of it crashed against the back of his skull. Liquid stumbled a step, and Ocelot gave him a shove that finished the job, sending him crashing against a closed door hard enough to rattle his teeth in his jaw.

“Go inside,” Ocelot snapped.

This time, Liquid hesitated. In the flash that had exploded behind his eyes when his temple struck the doorframe, he had seen a vision of a silver autopsy table, its gutters running red with blood. If that was what lay in wait for him in the next room, then perhaps he would begin to regret his words, though a moment ago they had seemed worth it.

He made a show of groping for the doorknob, buying himself some time to scent the air in an attempt to pick up the familiar coppery tang of blood.

Finally he realized that hesitation meant nothing. Whatever was beyond the door would or wouldn’t happen to him, as much or as little as Ocelot preferred. Waiting, hemming, hawing - it changed nothing about the dynamic he existed under here. The epiphany came with a measure of nihilism that made him fling the door open abruptly, hard enough to hit the inside wall.

Ocelot’s eyes narrowed. “Mind you don’t scar the tile. It’s handmade.”

Liquid laughed in spite of himself. “An artisanal torture chamber. How very you. Blood and piss just doesn’t look the same on Home Depot stock, does it?”

“You quite misapprehend the nature of this little field trip,” Ocelot said crisply. “You aren’t here to be _reformed_ , but rewarded.”

Liquid didn’t trust those words at first, but after a moment had to admit to himself that Ocelot had never lied to him, regardless of what else he might do. He moved forward, slowly, pulling off the blindfold. Ocelot stood in the doorway, smirking, arms crossed.

The light inside was dim and atmospheric, sconces casting artful shadows up the walls. It was a spa room, Euro-sleek and stylized, with an offset lounge and a large shower enclosure. The tile that spanned the floors and walls was oversized and zen grey, interspersed with swathes of flat black pebble - on the shower floor, on an accent wall. The floor tiles were heated beneath his bare feet.

“Clean yourself up,” said Ocelot.

“Here?” Liquid was aware of how bewildered he sounded, and he hated it.

“Would you rather go back to the _other_ shower?”

“No,” said Liquid, at once. He remembered the smell of powerful antiseptic, the harsh light and cold industrial tile of the utilitarian barrack-like shower they’d hosed him down in before.

“Well then, you’d best strip.”

There wasn’t much to remove, as he’d only been allowed to keep his pants. He began to shed those and realized Ocelot was turning away, as if to leave. “You’re not going to stay and watch?” he said, a wry, dark note creeping into his voice without his permission.

“I’ve seen it all before,” said Ocelot, coolly. “Believe me, I’ve seen parts of you that you’ve never seen. The mystery is well and truly dead.”

He knew it wasn’t true, and that there was one thing Ocelot did lie to him about.

“I’ll be quick,” Liquid said. He dropped the trousers and stepped out of them. Ocelot didn’t look at him, and Liquid did not look down at himself, either. He didn’t need to contemplate his bruises, and he didn’t want to see the way the mood lighting captured the wasted cast of muscles.

Ocelot closed the door behind himself, but he didn’t lock it. It seemed a strange oversight, but Liquid supposed Ocelot knew as well as anyone that he wasn’t about to try anything.

He padded over to the shower enclosure and reached up and ran his finger around the cool rim of the showerhead. There was a stone shelf next to the taps with a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap arranged on it. The soap was still in a neat linen wrapped and the shampoo still had the plastic seal on the cap.

Liquid shook his head, incredulous.

When he turned on the tap, the water came out hot almost at once. No waiting around for the pipes to heat up like in the Philanthropy loft. No jittery spray of water, either, just a smooth rush over his battered shoulders, and an abrupt coil of steam around his calves.

An eddy of water swirled down the drain, tinted with old blood.

Liquid reached for the shampoo, when a movement behind him attracted his attention. He heard nothing, but he caught a stirring, a shadow moving with the abstraction of the rising steam.

“You decided to stay after all,” Liquid said. He did not sound bitter at all, nor did he feel it.

“Frumos…”

The voice was closer than Liquid had expected, and he turned sharply on his heels. Vamp stood in the arch that opened into the shower, his hair sticking to his cheeks in the damp air.

“Jesus, Adrian…” Liquid started forward a step, but Vamp shrunk from his touch as if ashamed.

Liquid grabbed his wrist before he could retreat entirely. “Don’t be ridiculous.” 

Vamp couldn’t seem to meet his eyes, or bring himself to look at his naked body. “I never would have hurt you.” His voice was low, almost subterranean. “I couldn’t protect you, but I never would have hurt you.”

Liquid stared for a moment, then reached out with both hands and cupped Vamp’s face in the damp spray, fervently gazing, seeking, stroking his black hair back with a strange and ardent urgency. “I’m glad it was you.”

Vamp’s face contorted. “How can you be like this? Take me. Take me the same way. Up against the wall. Have your revenge. Rip me open, Frumos. I cannot take it otherwise.”

“What are you saying?” murmured Liquid. “Nonsense.”

He could feel Adrian shudder in his arms. “You must not be kind. I cannot bear that either.”

“You’ll have to,” said Liquid solemnly. “Believe me when I tell you...I’ve had worse.”

The vision of the gurney and the gutters flashed across his mind again, like a swing of nausea. He thought he could almost hear the trickle of blood in the channels, divergent rivers from an endless ocean of suffering. No matter how dire the insult, he always healed.

“I cannot undo that which I’ve done,” Vamp said, raising his pale eyes suddenly. “And I cannot save you. But I have found the one who can.” His fingers found Liquid’s forearms and clutched in hard. “I came to offer myself, and to tell you that. You will not have me, so I can only give you this: I found your brother. I found Solid Snake.”

Liquid felt a knot catch his throat, sharp as shrapnel. He steeled his resolve and forced himself to laugh around it.

“Solid Snake?” he spat. “I thought you knew me better than that, Adrian.”

He turned away. Vamp’s hand remained on his forearm, and Liquid wrenched it free of his grip. He had succeeded only in coming off as petulant, and he was sure Vamp would see right through him. Liquid had found a well of forgotten talents within himself, but it appeared that maintaining a calm and rational demeanor was not among them.

Only Snake - David - had been able to do that.

“What do I care for Solid Snake?” Liquid muttered. He stepped back under the spray and ran his fingers through his hair so the water penetrated the thick layers. “Or Solid Snake for me?”

Vamp’s hand came down on his shoulder, and Liquid shrank beneath it. A bead of moisture pooled on the corner of his eye and broke loose and ran down his cheek. It was not water from the shower, but it was lost in it as soon as it fell.

“Listen, if I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to have to do it myself. Solid Snake can’t help me, and I’m not sure there’s much you can do either.”

Vamp hung his head. “Perhaps I cannot do much, but there are still things that I can do.”

He reached toward one of the soaps on the shelf.

Liquid’s eyes followed the motion. His lips parted and he found his voice in quiet indignation. “I won’t rape you, Adrian. I--”

He fell silent as Vamp’s long, strong hands found his hair, and began to wash it. An odd bloom of embarrassment washed over him, a strange hybrid emotion with monstrous parentage from a multitude of angles. His crude assumption being one. His body’s treasonous tear another.

“There.” Vamp soothed him in a voice like scorched velvet. He slid his fingers deftly into Liquid’s thick mane, worked them against his scalp. “You misunderstood me. If you were to agree and take me in vengeance, I would have you do it dry. As I did you.”

Liquid felt a tremor of revulsion pass through him, but it was soon overridden by the pure visceral pleasure of Adrian’s touch. It was euphoric, heady, foreign--almost like a drug, after the pain and harsh treatment he’d been subjected to for days on end. There was no telling, was there, how many days. And there would be no telling, unless the time was marked by someone else. Someone outside this reality.

Otacon. His mind skipped violently over Snake, like a deep groove in a warped record. Hal could tell him how long he’d been away. Not away, he remonstrated. And certainly not missing. Gone. How well he knew that they were not the same thing.

“You’re tense again.” Vamp’s lips were near his ear. “He is not here. There is no pain to steel against.”

Liquid knew which _him_ Adrian meant, but it applied equally well to either. “Sorry,” he murmured, exhaling, forcing himself to become lax. “How’s that?”

Vamp’s brow furrowed. “Better.”

Adrian rinsed his bitterness away with the chasing of soap suds. He did not seem to care that he was becoming drenched in the process. All his attention was focused on Liquid. Liquid was silent, letting the spray run down his face, letting it bead on his lips and eyelashes. It would mingle with any stray traitors and carry them down the drain, swirl them away into oblivion. 

Vamp finished with his hair, went back to the soap, and moved on to his body without a word. Liquid let him, feeling overcome. There was a deeper fulfillment in being tended to, caressed and cosseted and stroked and _known_.

For a pained moment he let himself wonder what it would have been like if Snake had been soft with him when he was battered and broken. If Snake had reached out like this. Taken charge, taken care of him that day in the showers. It was past brotherly, what Vamp was doing now, but it was genuine compassion.

The irony of that did not escape him--that he was receiving more regard in captivity than sanctuary, that his own brother did not care if he lived or died. At least he was valuable to Ocelot. To Solidus.

And to this man.

Vamp soaped his chest in slow circles. Liquid reached up and clasped his wrist, lightly, letting his head fall back.

“He has stolen much,” murmured Adrian, near his ear, eyes downcast. “But not your beauty.”

Liquid stepped forward deliberately, pushing Vamp back a step and up against the wall next to the arch. He pressed his palms flat against Vamp’s chest, and then slid them out, over his broad shoulders and powerful arms, until they reached his wrists. Liquid guided Vamp’s hands up, pinning them against the tile above his head. When he removed his hands, Vamp allowed his to stay, as if manacles had emerged from the wall to bind him.

“Part of me thinks he sent you to do this,” Liquid said.

“Is that so?” Vamp made an attempt to sound innocent, but there was nothing innocent in the way he turned his hips. Liquid’s eyes strayed downward; he could detect the outline of Vamp’s cock through damp and clinging fabric.

He reached out to graze his fingers along it. Vamp made a small sound in the back of his throat and tried to step away from the wall. Liquid’s other hand snapped out and closed around his wrists, pinning him in place, a development that Vamp submitted to without complaint.

“Even if he sent you, I don’t care,” Liquid said. “I know what I am. I know what you are.”

“You know,” Vamp said. “But you do not understand.”

“So explain it to me,” Liquid said. But when Vamp opened his mouth to respond, he leaned in to kiss him, choking the words into silence.

When he pulled back, Vamp followed him, pressing his forehead against Liquid’s temple, nuzzling his hairline. Liquid was glad for that, because it meant that he did not have to look Vamp in the face as he started working his clothing loose. His hands were confident as they undid the buttons of Vamp’s shirt, as they slipped inside to graze reverently over the ridges of his muscles.

He had done this before. It had been like this before. But when he tried to think back, to access those slowly crystallizing memories from the past, he found only the old agonies and terrors awaiting him.

When he shivered, Vamp felt it, and his arms came away from the tile and wrapped around him. Liquid convulsed with a dry and comfortless sob. Just one, and then it was over.

“Tell me about my brother,” he demanded.

“He saw me.” Adrian’s voice was low, subtly hitched by his heightening breath. “I went to find him. For you, Frumos. To see. To allow myself to be seen. He could not have known where to find you. Surely he will come for you now.”

“Why do you think that?” Liquid’s voice was flat. Vamp’s mouth played against his throat, lips seeking his pulse, tongue brushing the skin en pointe. His affection was as ravenous now as his detachment had been brutal before.

_Making amends_ , thought Liquid. Graciousness. _Forgiveness. That’s something you’d do well to learn, brother…_

“Because he saved you. He could have thrown you back. He could have finished you off. But he did none of these. He took you in. Deep inside he must know: there is no one like him but you, Frumos. No one in the world.”

“I doubt there are many men like you either,” Liquid intoned, freeing Vamp’s cock with one hand and edging their loins close so that the glans brushed along his own stiffening length. “Adrian.”

Vamp groaned, grinding into him with wanton abandon. “Rape me,” he whispered throatily.

“No,” uttered Liquid, easing Vamp’s leather pants down his strong thighs. They peeled away from him, parting from his flesh like the dark skin of a forbidden fruit. Adrian’s cock was flushed and hard as stone, angled upward like an arrow. Liquid grasped it, jerking it slowly against his own.

“Make me kneel,” hissed Vamp, as his eyes closed and his head rolled back.

“No.” It came out on the edge of his breath.

Vamp made a noise of frustration. “Then hurt me, Frumos. Hit me. Give me what I deserve. Give me back the pain I gave you. I cannot..”

“The pain wasn’t from you,” Liquid said. “That was Ocelot. You were only a proxy. A tool.”

Vamp’s pale eyes slid open, seeking his, something unreadable in his gaze. “And am I a proxy now?”

Liquid felt a strange stab of something, a pain wholly different than the kind he’d been enduring of late. He grasped the back of Adrian’s head and brought their brows together. “How could I pretend you were anybody else? I know who you are, Adrian.”

Vamp shuddered. “Say my name. Say my name when you’re inside me.” His hand clasped the back of Liquid’s neck, their lips close enough that he could feel Vamp’s breath warring with his own. “I invite you. I invite you.”

Liquid surged forward into a bruising kiss. Their limbs tangled as Vamp tossed his sodden clothes aside, but then Liquid took him by the shoulders and pushed him back against the tile with barely sheathed violence.

“You’re more than just a tool, Adrian,” Liquid said. “You’re more than just what they made you to be. We both are. I won’t forget it, no matter what they do. Don’t you forget it either.”

“Is that an order?”

“It’s an order.”

He reached down and ran the tips of his fingers along the underside of Vamp’s cock. Vamp’s stance shifted wider instinctively, and Liquid moved forward so his hips were between the other man’s thighs.

One of Vamp’s legs came up and hooked behind Liquid’s back, angling his body, inviting him in. Liquid briefly considered their lack of preparation, but he supposed that Vamp knew what he was doing. Maybe he wanted it this way, with a little pain, like a ritual he had to follow with exactness.

Liquid pushed forward, finding no resistance as he entered him. Vamp made a small noise, a moan or a whimper. He had thrown his head back so Liquid couldn’t see his eyes. He sought his throat instead, exploring it with his lips, scraping his teeth over the erratic pulse that throbbed there.

“Adrian,” he murmured. “You like this, Adrian.”

Vamp shuddered in their rough embrace, writhing, almost purring. His arms clutched Liquid with the unnatural strength of a supersoldier, which Liquid found both familiar and unbearably arousing. He drove himself into Adrian, hard and slow, seating deep each time, sheathing his cock to the hilt. Pinned and impaled, Vamp seemed to be in his element. He gasped and uttered ragged benedictions and broken curses, both in English and his own tongue. His hands grasped the muscles of Liquid’s back, his hips rocked in counterpoint to Liquid’s thrusts.

“You like my accent, yes?” Liquid breathed.

“Da,” groaned Vamp.

“I like yours too.”

He could feel the warm spray beating down on their straining bodies. Like the sun was shining on them for once.

Vamp turned his face against the curve of his neck and his lips moved like wet silk against Liquid’s skin. When he came, he bit down hard on Liquid’s shoulder, his filed incisors like twin hypodermics, small points of pain to drive out the agony that had consumed him.

“Jesus, Adrian…” Liquid gasped. He dug in, and his next thrust lifted Vamp’s feet off the ground. The last vestiges of his old strength, almost terrifying in its overwhelming power. He could well see how a man could be swept up on the tide of a strength like that, carried away to some hostile and foreign shore.

They could not control a strength like that, he realized with sudden and perfect clarity. They could only hope to point its way.

He came with a sound low in his throat, a sound not quite human. He felt Vamp’s body go rigid in his arms. Carefully, he lowered his feet back to the floor.

“That was…” Vamp’s hands found the ridges between two tiles and he clung to them.

“Good,” Liquid finished for him evenly. When Vamp had straightened himself out enough to look him in the face, Liquid met him with a steady gaze.

“You should go,” he said. “Before they realize you’re here.”

Vamp’s expression wavered for a moment, but then he bowed his head. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”

He stepped out of the shower and retrieved his clothes. Liquid turned away and tracked his movements by sound instead, enjoying the sensation of mapping the shape of him in the air.

“Adrian,” he said abruptly. “Thank you. For finding my brother. For not letting him forget me.”

“No one could forget you,” Vamp said in a low voice, and when Liquid turned, he was gone.


	17. Chapter 17

Snake’s most recent check of the Philanthropy loft didn’t turn up anything out of the ordinary. There were no signs of forced entry, no listening devices in the wall outlets. Not even any stray hairs, too dark to belong to either Snake or Otacon.

While Snake performed the inspection - one of many since he had spotted that stranger on the street a few days back - Otacon padded after him sheepishly, shoveling bites of Thai food into his mouth. He’d always been a nervous eater, but he never seemed to put on much weight because of it. Snake could barely take a week off from the gym before he started to get soft around the middle, but Otacon maintained the same easy and un-toned skinniness of a teenager.

Snake didn’t think much of it. There was very little that was fair about the world.

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a tiny bit?” Otacon asked solicitously as Snake finished a patrol of the living room. He started heading back towards the bathroom.

“No,” Snake said.

“It’s been a week, Dave. If he was coming back, I think we’d know by now.”

“Look, you don’t ask for my opinion on whether Batman or Spiderman would win in a fight, and I didn’t ask for your opinion on this.”

“Maybe if you’d actually tell me what you saw that spooked you so bad, I could form an opinion,” Otacon sniffed around a bite of noodles.

“I saw a man.”

“Okay,” Otacon said. “That’s progress. What kind of man? What did he want?”

“No idea. Unless you’re hiding another one of my clone brothers around here.”

“M-me?” Otacon stammered.

Snake sighed and went into the bathroom. He stood in the doorway for a moment, staring at the industrial shower. He could mark the exact spot Liquid had been standing when he collapsed, the exact path their struggle had taken across the floor. The precise moment that he had…

He shut the thought down. Since Liquid had been taken off their hands, he’d been in here plenty of times. It was the only bathroom, and there wasn’t much avoiding it. He hadn’t thought much about what they had done, or what he hadn’t done but might have. It hadn’t even crossed his mind until this moment.

“He wanted me to see him,” Snake said. “And to recognize him.”

“You recognized him?” Otacon said.

Snake set his jaw. His hands curled into fists at his sides, and then slowly unclenched again. “Yeah, I did.”

Otacon waited, takeout box in hand, chopsticks hovering precariously with an oversized bite of phad see yew. Several beats passed. Snake was still glowering. Otacon eyed his noodles. “Who is he?” he asked, finally, and shoved them in his mouth.

“His name’s Adrian Lazarescu. He doesn’t go by that, though. Not on the job. The world--our world--knows him as Vamp.”

Otacon made a face. “Vamp? What kind of a name is that?”

Snake snorted. “What kind of a name is _Otacon_?”

Otacon pushed his glasses up with his free hand. “Well, it’s a referen--”

“Nobody cares, Hal. That was one of those questions. You know, the kind you don’t have to answer.”

From the way he was sullenly stuffing his face, it was pretty obvious that Otacon was sulking, but Snake knew he’d get over it. He wasn’t built to hold a grudge. 

He decided to go on talking like nothing had happened. Hal would get with the program.

“He’s a mercenary. A supersoldier, with nanomachines in his blood. He’s cryptic. Strange. Some people say he can’t die.” Snake grimaced. “I don’t know if I buy that, but he’s got to be damned hard to kill. No one’s managed it yet, and believe me, they’ve tried.”

“Golly.” Otacon was wide-eyed, watching him. “Just like Vampire Hunter D.”

Snake looked at him witheringly.

Hal coughed. “Well, anyway. Why would he want you to recognize him?”

Snake’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. The only thing I know for sure is the most recent line on his resume. He’s been working for Solidus, and Revolver Ocelot, and unless something’s changed, he still does.”

“S-Solidus?” Otacon’s eyes widened. “Your b-brother?”

“Y-yes, Hal. My b-b-brother.” Snake became aware of his growling stomach, and figured he ought to get in on some of that tom kah and panang curry before Hal ate the rest of his feelings. He opened the refrigerator and pulled out an amber ale. Unlike Otacon, he didn’t drink bubble tea.

He hooked the bottle on a counter edge and knocked it with his palm, uncapping it. Then he took a long drink. His gaze fell on an empty container on the counter. “Did you leave me any beef satay? Christ, Hal. I even bought extra.”

Otacon retrieved a fresh container from the depths of one of the plastic bags. As Snake cracked it open, he offered a pair of cheap chopsticks that were more splinters than wood. Snake snorted and pulled out a fork instead.

“The way I see it, there are two possibilities,” he said, and then shoveled a bite into his mouth. While he chewed it, Otacon stared at him like a man left waiting for the results of his medical diagnostic.

“The first is that they sent him to do recon on us, and I got lucky and spotted him. But that’s unlikely for a couple reasons. First, sending a man like that to do a little scout work is like swatting a fly with a missile launcher. Besides that, from what I know about him, he’s not the type to make a mistake like letting his mark see his face.”

“How do you know so much?” Otacon said.

“Word gets around.”

“Like on the secret supersoldier social network?”

Snake hmphed into his beer. “The other option is that his bosses sent him so I would see him and know who was involved. They’re warning us to stay away. I’ve known about Solidus for a while, longer than I knew about Liquid, at any rate. It was hard to miss him. I used to see the President on TV and think I was going crazy. He looked so much like my old man…”

“Who’s involved,” Otacon repeated. “Involved in the break in? You think Solidus Snake has your brother?”

“Why else would that freak show make an appearance? They wanted to send a message, Hal. They want us to know they have him.”

Otacon picked up a stick of satay and swirled it in peanut sauce. “There’s a third option, you know.”

“Those are mine,” Snake said flatly. “You already ate your share.”

“Oops. Too late,” said Otacon, around a mouthful of beef. “Sorry.”

“Don’t forget who brings in the kill around here. I actually burn calories doing my job. Unlike some people, I don’t just sit at a computer.”

“Gaming is very arduous. People have died.”

Snake glowered. “You were saying something about a third option.”

“Oh. Right.” Otacon sucked peanut sauce off his fingers and Snake’s lip twitched. “Yeah. Maybe he was just trying to talk to you, and you chased him off.”

Snake stared. “Yeah, sure. He was in the neighborhood, and just dropped in for an informal chat. Him and all his knives. Actually, he was about to leave his calling card--are you listening to yourself, Otacon? That is, bar none, the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say, and believe me, after being your partner for this long, I’m spoiled for choice.”

“Did he actually pull a knife on you?” Otacon said. “Did he even look at you funny? Or did you just assume he was there to do something bad?”

“With a man like that, bad is a pretty safe assumption,” Snake said. “They say that in the Balkans he…”

Snake trailed off. Otacon was no longer listening. His eyes were fixed on the door at Snake’s back. Rather, something in the doorway. Something, Snake knew without looking, had not been there a moment ago.

So slowly it almost seemed not to be moving at all, Snake slid his hand along the counter, inching it towards the gun tucked in his jeans.

“That’s enough of that, Solid Snake,” Vamp purred. He stepped forward into the kitchen, a movement Snake could only track by the way Otacon’s mute and wild-eyed stare moved to follow it. Vamp’s feet made absolutely no sound on the tile at all.

“By all means, continue your conversation,” Vamp went on. His soundless steps eventually brought him around on Snake’s right side where he could see him. His Bowie knife was in one hand, and he trailed the fingers of the other idly along the counter. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Snake steeled himself for a fight. He’d have to deal with Otacon first, he figured. Get him down, hopefully with no more than a couple of cuts to show for it. Then find a weapon. Vamp knew about the gun in his jeans and he would have eyes on it, but not about the carving knife in the drawer. He wasn’t the only one who could use a blade.

“Isn’t Liquid enough for you?” Otacon said shrilly. “Isn’t there anyone you people won’t hurt?”

Vamp let his breath out in a sound that was almost a laugh. “You misunderstand. Liquid Snake is plenty to satisfy my needs.”

His wandering hand came in contact with Snake’s beer bottle, and he picked it up, looking at the label. “I’ll take one of these, if you don’t mind.”

“Get your own,” Snake ground out. “The icebox is right over there.”

Surprisingly, Vamp did just that. 

Snake shot Otacon a dirty look. “You see?”

“See what?” Hal stammered. He looked like he was ready to shit himself or pass out, or both, not necessarily in that order. 

“A goddamn enemy supersoldier has better manners than my own roommate.”

Vamp laughed, and this time it was less mannered menace, more genuine amusement. “I see you gentlemen enjoy a complicated relationship.” He glanced at the beer in his hand, assessing the bottle in a leisurely way. “I can appreciate that.”

“It’s not a twist-top,” said Snake. “Opener’s in the drawer.” He checked his head toward it, and Vamp nodded, with a faint uplift of his chin. He found the opener and popped the top off the bottle, then thoughtfully replaced it and closed the drawer with a soft snick. Snake watched him warily, narrow-eyed.

“That is how I would describe my relationship with your brother, Solid Snake. _Com_ -plicated. Not quite in the same way, but complicated all the same.”

“What do you know about my brother?” Snake’s voice came out strange; harder and harsher than he’d expected.

Vamp’s pale eyes met his own with brazen impunity. “I know a great deal, indeed. You might say I know him...inside and out.”

“Because he tortured him!” Otacon broke in, to Snake’s surprise, emboldened by indignant hysteria. “He told us what happened after Shadow Moses. What you did to him.”

“You sick fuck,” muttered Snake.

Vamp eyed them sourly. “You offend me with your presumption.” He leaned back against the counter, took a pull from the bottle and considered it. “Still, given whose employ I currently--” he grimaced, “--enjoy, I cannot blame you for misreading the situation.”

“That’s generous of you,” grunted Snake.

“But your friend _tocilar_ here was actually quite correct. I came only to speak with you. Me and all my knives.” He raised the bottle demonstratively. “To have a beer and bull-shit, as you say.”

“So spit it out already,” Snake said. “We’ve got shit to do tonight.”

“My time is short as well, and I must not be caught away from home,” Vamp said. But he paused for another long, leisurely drink of beer before he continued. “Solid Snake,” he said, fixing him with pale eyes as sharp as the points on two of his blades. “Your brother is waiting for you to find him. He does not think you will come, but he knows he needs you. This is the battle he fights now.”

“Old news,” Snake said through gritted teeth. “I’ve already made my decision. Whatever war Liquid’s fighting, he can do it without my help.”

“So much for brotherly love, I suppose.”

“I’m not his only brother,” Snake said. “I thought you knew a thing or two about that.”

Vamp’s eyes narrowed and, to Snake’s surprise, he turned away. He planted his palms on the counter and leaned against it with his back to them, his face to the wall. 

“A thing or two,” Vamp said. “Yes, you could put it that way. Still, for all the terror he has wrought, I know that Solidus has always fought for himself, in defiance of the forces that would bend him to their will and exploit an accident of genetics in the name of profit. You can be sympathetic to that, for you, too, have made a clean break with them. The late bloomer of the family, but you came around in time.”

Otacon opened his mouth to say something, but Snake put up a hand, cutting him off. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I was reluctant to take up the family business.”

“There is no business,” Vamp said quietly. “Just stubborn men who are arrogant enough to think they can change the world. You all exhaust me.”

At that moment, with his posture bent and his voice so quiet it was little more than a rough whisper, Snake could really believe that Vamp was telling the truth.

“They will take even that from him,” Vamp went on. “His ability to make his own mistakes, the freedom to stoke the fire upon which he will eventually burn. They’ll enslave him, and it will be worse than torture, worse even than death. You do not love him, but surely you must pity him. He is your blood. Some of us do not even have that.”

Snake had words on deck; words he’d been intending to say, but somehow they slipped through his fingers. He stared, jaw working, unsure how to respond--feeling a rising tide that threatened to pull him under. Maybe it was blood.

Hal saved him. Hal, of all people.

“Oh. Em. Gee,” whispered Otacon, covering his mouth. “That was beautiful. That was beautiful, wasn’t it, Snake? Really makes you think.”

Snake put his beer to his lips and drank for a long time. When he was done he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and leveled his gaze at Vamp’s silent back. When he spoke, his voice was low and coarse.

“And what’s in all this for you, Adrian Lazarescu? What makes you so goddamn sympathetic to my brother’s cause? This could all be a trap to lure us out into the open, so Solidus and Ocelot can take pot-shots at us. So they can hit me over the head and drag me off to complete their G.I. Joe collection. Tell me why I should believe a fucking thing you say.”

Vamp turned slowly. “Because he is my lover,” he said, fixing his eyes to Snake’s. “And I do not want to see him dead.” His gaze lowered. “Or ruined.”

Snake dropped his beer. It slipped right out of his fingers and plummeted to the wide-plank floor, shattering in a starburst of glass and liquid.

Otacon shrieked. Snake wasn’t sure if it was the sudden noise or the shocking revelation.

He swiveled his head, viciously. “Dammit, Hal, get me a dustpan.” Otacon did as he said, looking even paler than usual, if that were possible. “And a rag,” he yelled after him. “And a broom.”

Vamp still looked at him, unflinching, owning the words he’d spoken, like there was no shame in them at all.

“What do you want?” Snake said. “A medal?”

“No, merely a promise. Say that you will come.”

“I can’t make a promise like that.”

“I see,” Vamp said. “Then I have risked much, and all for nothing.”

“Don’t let us keep you,” Snake said.

“As you wish.” Vamp bowed his head. Snake watched him without blinking as he headed for the door. His dramatic exit was arrested only momentarily, by a strangled scream and the clatter of falling metal from the hallway.

Snake sighed. Vamp must have run into Hal on the way out.

“Pardon me,” Vamp said graciously, and then he said something else, something too quiet for Snake to hear. Concerned, he headed toward the voices, but by the time he stepped out into the hall Vamp was gone. Otacon stood in the middle of the hall, pallid and harried, the broom and dustpan scattered around his feet.

“Relax,” Snake said. “He’s not coming back. He just wanted to drop his dramabomb on us before he had to get back to his boss. See the look on our faces.”

“Dave, he said…”

“I know, all right? I heard him. Look, I’ll clean up the mess in the kitchen. You need to make arrangements, get the other place ready for us. We might need to deploy in a hurry.”

“Sure, Snake. But he gave me something.”

For the first time, Snake noticed that Otacon’s right hand was clenched into a fist. Slowly he opened it, showing him a USB drive. Snake’s eyes sharpened on it as if it were a weapon. “He said this was everything we needed to know about where they’re keeping Liquid and how to get in. He said he hoped you’d reconsider.”

Snake snatched the USB out of his hand. “He’d like that, wouldn’t he?”


	18. Chapter 18

The Ocelot that came to take Liquid back to his cell was a man of few words. Liquid didn’t care; both his body and mind were flush with pain-killing post-coital endorphins, and he’d heard Ocelot talk enough for one lifetime.

Even in his state of mild euphoria, Liquid was mindful enough to make sure his damp hair obscured the bitemark on his neck. There was no telling what would happen to Vamp if they found he’d been giving comfort to the enemy.

When they reached the cell, Ocelot held the door for him and motioned him inside. “Get some rest,” he said, gruff and abrupt.

Liquid had laughed, caustic and rhapsodic. “Certainly, stepmother dear. You’d never put a pea under my mattress, would you?” He’d finally reached a point of exhaustion where he could sleep under almost any circumstances. But sleep that kept you alive wasn’t sleep that restored you. That kind of sleep was a luxury he’d all but forgotten.

Ocelot had smirked and closed the door behind him. Liquid heard the lock engage quietly, no longer the loud, deliberate sound meant to deflate his hopes. Odd, he thought, but no one had ever accused Ocelot of being predictable.

It was only after he’d left, the sound of his spurs retreating down the concrete hallway, that Liquid realized there was something new in his spartan environment: a pillow and neatly folded grey hotel blanket sat on the end of his cot.

Left alone, Liquid lay back under the blanket and put his arms behind his head, closing his eyes. His damp hair felt nice and smelled clean. He was used to the constant assault of harsh florescent light against his lids, so he was taken aback when it suddenly abated. He opened his eyes and saw nothing. The room was dark.

Darkness was merciful and worked wonders he had all but forgotten. As he fell into drowsy half-thought he wondered if this would be the beginning of another round-the-clock stint of constant night and sensory deprivation. In the moment he didn’t much care.

He woke to a gentle rapping at the heavy steel door. After a moment, it opened a crack, letting in a long slice of light. “It’s ten AM.” He heard Revolver Ocelot’s unmistakable voice say. “I’m going to turn on the light.” 

Light flooded the cell. It was an artificial morning in a windowless world, but a morning nonetheless, if Ocelot was to be believed.

“You look favorable today, I must say. I take it you enjoyed your shower. Sleep well?”

Liquid sat up, bolt upright, awake in an instant. He eyed Ocelot, saying nothing. Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps this was where the gurney and the gutters came in. Perhaps it made for a greater shock to the system after lulling the captive with a false moment of respite.

His heart jackknifed and began to thud dully in his chest. A vestigial physical reflex, he thought. Otherwise, he felt calm, almost nihilist.

Ocelot looked him over, peering into his face. “Yes, not bad. Still, we need to do something about those dark circles under your eyes, don’t we?”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but since staying in your guest room, somehow I haven’t been getting my beauty sleep.”

Ocelot’s manner seemed different, somehow. Where before he’d been taut and forward-leaning as a gunfighter, now he was easygoing as a ranch hand. That wasn’t all that was different. Ocelot had changed clothes overnight. Since he had arrived, Liquid hadn’t seen him wear anything but the khaki suit and chambray shirt - or perhaps many suits, and many shirts, all cut to immaculately fit his frame.

Today, however, he wore wool pinstripes, ivory on charcoal. His shirt was pale blue, flecked with a repeating floral pattern. His gloves were the same, though, and so were his guns.

It was an autumn suit. Perhaps this was Ocelot’s way of reminding him that the seasons still turned, time did not stand still simply because Liquid had been ripped so violently from it.

“You won’t be sleeping here tonight, kid,” Ocelot said, watching him steadily, with steely eyes a shade darker and a degree more metallic than his new shirt. “You’ve moved up in the world.”

Liquid didn’t believe it, could not believe it. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, running a hand through his hair so that it fell over the bruise on his neck. No matter what they did, he would not betray that. He had found the limits of his strength, and he was confident in his ability to keep that one secret to himself.

“Time to meet the boss,” Ocelot drawled. “Boss.”

He stepped inside. Liquid felt his muscles ratcheting up tight, aching to flinch away from him. He remained still. Ocelot set a folded brown package on the edge of the bed, then he stepped back, out of the way.

“I got you something.”

Bewildered, Liquid picked up the package and shook it out. It was a heavy brown duster, crossed with straps. He slipped the coat over his bare shoulders, and when he stood up the heavy tails swung around his calves. The duster was cut to fit and broken in at the joints.

“No shirt?” Liquid said, smoothing his hands over his lapels.

Ocelot let out an exhale of breath that was almost a laugh, from a man who had forgotten how to laugh before Liquid was even born.

“Put on the boots, too,” Ocelot said. He had left a pair sitting next to the door, and now he tapped them with his toe. “I’ll be outside.”

He left the door open a crack. Liquid could see his shadow moving in the hall. He pulled on the boots and laced them up. Between them and the coat, he felt armored and arrayed for battle.

Out in the hallway, Ocelot leaned against the corridor wall. His gun was out and he was making it spin idly around one finger. One turn forward, and one turn back. A piece of hardware like that must have weighed close to 5 pounds fully loaded, but Ocelot handled it with a light touch, as if the gun moved on its own and he only guided its flight.

He holstered it when Liquid stepped out of the cell, and turned an appraising eye up to his face. “How do you feel?”

Liquid laughed, incredulous. “Great.”

“It passes in time,” Ocelot said. “You’re fine now. Safe.”

Liquid shook his head. “What are you trying to do this time?”

“The boss is waiting. We’ll talk later.” He straightened up and reached out. Liquid tried to shrink from him, but Ocelot was too fast for him. He snagged a strand of hair from behind Liquid’s ear and pulled it out front so it fell over his neck, across the mark that Vamp had left on him.

Ocelot’s expression shifted minutely, like a faint ripple that passed outward from his eyes and then dissipated. Then he turned on his heels, and Liquid followed him.

They went maybe fifty feet down the long concrete hallway, until they reached an unassuming elevator. Ocelot called down the car and they waited in casually awkward silence, Ocelot with his arms crossed and gaze roaming everywhere but Liquid. When the elevator showed up, Ocelot waved him inside with an arm-sweep of unexpected chivalry. Liquid searched his eyes for mocking but saw none. He stepped inside and Ocelot followed, punching buttons decisively. Ocelot re-crossed his arms and they resumed the awkward-but-casual silence, side by side, as the carriage ascended.

Liquid watched the floors tick by and tried not to think about what was coming next.

“It’s a high-rise, you know,” Ocelot said, abruptly, as if Liquid hadn’t been able to figure that out by the sheer number of floors.

“You don’t say,” Liquid drawled.

Ocelot nodded. “Solidus acquired it among his holdings, and had it retrofitted; kitted out to our specs.” He’d either missed the arid tone in Liquid’s voice, or else he didn’t care. Liquid didn’t think Ocelot missed much, so he had to assume it was the latter. “Debriefing and...re-education rooms, which you’ve been a valued visitor of, are located right under the parking garage. Subterranean and clandestine.”

“Charming,” murmured Liquid. “I’ll be sure to sign the guestbook.”

In his peripheral vision, he thought Ocelot cracked some poor, shirttail cousin of a smile, like a new crease in stiff-weathered leather. “Right now, we’re headed for the top floor. Like I said, you’re moving up in the world, boss.”

“Having something to wear besides pants already has me on cloud nine.”

“Is that so?” Ocelot said vaguely, as if a persistent thought had cropped up again suddenly to distract him. The elevator slowed to a velvety halt, and the doors slid open without a sound. Ocelot escorted him off, and into an elegant penthouse. The carpet was so thick that Liquid could feel his feet sinking in with each step, and the slanted heels of Ocelot’s cowboy boots left wedge-shaped indentations in the plush.

The penthouse was arranged to look like an exclusive club, all wood panels and modest leather furniture. There was a row of of high, narrow windows, but they had been bolted over with shutters so Liquid couldn’t see through them. The only light in the room came from the scattering of floor lamps, and a chandelier the size of a Humvee suspended from the ceiling.

Solidus came forward to meet them. Though Liquid had managed to, for the most part, resist the urge to flinch from Ocelot’s touch, he couldn’t bring himself to reach out when Solidus extended his hand.

“Maybe I should be insulted” Solidus said, lowering his hand back to his side while he studied Liquid’s face with a single unreadable eye. “Is that what you were afraid of?”

Liquid didn’t answer. He thought about Adrian, and wondered if he was nearby. Though he knew they were both nothing but cautious, he felt himself pierced by an unshakable feeling that Solidus knew everything. About the shower, and about Vamp’s ill-advised visit to Solid Snake.

“Come in,” Solidus went on. “I’ll forgive your ill manners this once. You can’t expect to teach an old dog new tricks. At least not without some very clear reinforcement.”

Ocelot touched his arm from behind, and Liquid caught a sharp breath. When he glanced back, Ocelot inclined his head slightly towards one of the hard leather chairs. 

Liquid sank into the seat. Though he no longer felt fear or horror as he had in that cell under the earth, his hands were cold. It was as if his body had registered all the effects of terror, but his mind no longer knew how to comprehend it.

Solidus sat opposite him, and Ocelot moved unobtrusively to pour glasses of cognac. He pressed one into Liquid’s hand, and waited for Solidus to take the other.

Liquid held the snifter in his hand, letting the heat from his palm slowly warm the liquid. That would cause the flavors to bloom. He remembered this, he realized. He liked cognac, and leather, and ostentation.

Ocelot stuck with whiskey, eyeing them both, sidelong and surreptitious, as he poured himself a neat two fingers.

“Nothing like a good cognac,” said Solidus. “What is this one, Ocelot?”

“Frapin Cuvée,” Ocelot said, laconic.

Solidus took a sip straight away, eschewing the proper warming technique.

Philistine, thought Liquid, before he could stop himself, and was taken aback. Where had that moment of jaded contempt come from? Was this Liquid Snake? The man his brother despised?

As if he could hear Liquid’s thoughts, Ocelot gave him a narrow-eyed glance. Liquid put his cognac to his lips, keeping his expression studiously neutral and unassuming.

Solidus sat back in his chair. "You may not know this, but Ocelot reports to me every week. He’s been keeping me apprised of your progress as a special development project. It requires quite a bit of paperwork. Progress and projections and so forth.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I even make him give me a Power Point. Don’t I, Ocelot?”

Behind him Ocelot rolled his eyes and quaffed off the entirety of the whiskey without flinching. Solidus continued without noticing.

“He tells me you've been coming right along. Each week, he’s had more and more good things to say. Now he claims you've graduated our little program. Passed with flying colors. We expected no less, right, Ocelot?"

“It was never a question.” Ocelot found the whiskey bottle and poured himself another, raising his glass to Liquid almost imperceptibly.

“Ocelot is of the opinion that a solid education is its own reward. However, I believe in being a bit more lenient with our star pupil.” His gaze flicked to Ocelot momentarily, and his eye narrowed.

“Use a coaster,” he snapped savagely. Ocelot hesitated, the whiskey glass suspended an inch above the hardwood table. He moved it deliberately to the left and set it down.

“As I was saying,” Solidus went on, his undivided and unnerving attention once more focused fully on Liquid. “I’m of the opinion that a reward is in order. Positive reinforcement is an important part of training.”

His fingers briefly brushed against his jaw, activating his CODEC. A moment later, one of the interior doors of the salon slid open and Vamp stepped inside.

Vamp wasn’t looking at him, but as Liquid let his eyes linger on the strong lines of his turned profile, the knot at the point of his jaw where his teeth clenched, he felt the side of his throat begin to tingle. The mark Vamp had left on him burned like a brand, and Liquid’s hand tensed as if to reach for it.

He stopped himself at the last second. The mark was hidden. He knew that. Ocelot had seen to it. 

Liquid sought Ocelot out with his peripheral vision, but if he’d had a reason for that curious contact, he wasn’t about to give it up.

“Go on, Adrian,” Solidus continued. “You can look at him.”

Vamp lifted his eyes suddenly, boldly, and Liquid felt himself impaled by them.

“That’s better,” said Solidus. “I heard about your performance earlier. Quite the sight; I’m almost sorry I missed it. Of course, I wouldn’t be opposed to an encore.”

Liquid felt his throat constrict, but he was surprised when he opened his mouth and laughter came out. It sounded good, almost genuine, with just the barest hint of a bladed edge. “You old men are all the same. You want what was his, even if it’s just a body…”

He wasn’t even sure what “performance” Solidus was referring to. Did he know about the showers? Had Adrian broken under interrogation or inquisition and relayed their sodden tryst? Or was the bastard merely talking about what was obviously common knowledge - Vamp’s forced stunt-fuck under Ocelot’s direction? Perhaps he was even referring to their time in the hold of the tanker, for clearly Ocelot had known about that as well.

Ocelot’s eyes slid toward Solidus. “There’s no need for that,” he said, his voice like raw silk. “I can assure you, he performs well enough. Both of them do.”

“Now, Ocelot, don’t keep all the fun to yourself.” Solidus eyed them both at length, and Liquid felt his hackles bristle. “It’s important,” he said, slowly. “That he proves his loyalty. His obedience.”

Liquid’s lips parted. “Do I seem disobedient, brother?”

Solidus swirled his snifter for a moment, smiling darkly. “No, indeed, you seem strong. Eager to please. A little nervy, like a thoroughbred champing at the gate, who wants to show what he can do. So show me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Fuck him.” He indicated Adrian with a check of his head. “And then we’ll have a civilized chat.”

Liquid glanced at Ocelot, taken aback. “What?”

“Did I stutter? Fuck him.”

Ocelot frowned almost fiercely, looking to the side. He stayed silent, but Liquid could see the gears were turning behind his pale eyes. He wondered why. This ought to have been fairly routine for him.

“Where?” asked Vamp, flatly. He was already stripping out of his clothes.

“Adrian,” muttered Liquid, aghast.

“From behind, then. Over the table? On the rug? Or perhaps up against the wall?” Vamp was shirtless, now, and reaching for his fly.

“No to all of that,” murmured Solidus. “I think I’d like a bit more...intimacy.”

Liquid saw Vamp’s hands start, missing their mark. A beat later he recovered, unzipping his pants. “Very well,” he said in a low voice. “I will face him.”

“Yes, you will.” Solidus was warming to the idea. “Straddle him. There in the chair.”

Vamp stepped towards him and Liquid leaned back in his chair, sipping his cognac. This was a side of Vamp he hadn’t seen before, obedient to Solidus, tame as the dog they kept insisting they could turn Liquid himself into.

He swept his eyes over Vamp’s half-naked body. A side he hadn’t seen, indeed, but one that still looked good to him. He held up one hand.

“No.”

Vamp hesitated. His eyes shifted sidelong, to Solidus.

“It wasn’t a request,” Solidus said. “Adrian, get on with it. Persuade him, if you must. You didn’t have any trouble with that on the way here.”

“Yes, sir,” Vamp said. He started forward again.

Liquid was aware of the rapidly closing distance between them, but he didn’t look at Vamp. His eyes were fixed on Solidus. His fear had fallen away, and now he could face him without flinching or blinking.

“Do what you must, brother,” Liquid said. “I know your son isn’t to blame. I haven’t lost sight of who points the way around here. Just as you would do well not to lose sight of who points the guns.”

“Is that a refusal?” Solidus said.

“No. It’s a threat.”

Solidus planted his arms on the chair and half-rose to his feet. Liquid didn’t know what he would do when he got there, but he was aching to find out. He didn’t get the chance, not just yet, because it was at that moment that Ocelot stepped forward.

“Gentlemen,” he soothed. “I think we’ve all gotten off on the wrong foot.”

“Poor choice of words,” intoned Liquid. His eyes never shifted from Solidus.

Vamp seemed adrift; uncertain, stricken. He looked down, almost hiding in his hair. Liquid was reminded of a child, and his protective outrage redoubled. He’d seen too many children look like that, old and worn before their time.

“Now,” said Ocelot, “there is no need for vulgar displays. Not among friends. And we _are_ friends now, aren’t we? All of that fleeting unpleasantness is dealt with and behind us. Why prolong such fruitless struggles over meaningless gestures? It’s uncalled for, don’t you agree?” His voice was rough but honied, smooth and edged all at once.

Solidus sat back. “Interesting,” he said thoughtfully. “What a curious reaction, Ocelot.”

“I’m just protecting my investment.” At first, Liquid was certain that was referring to him, but then Ocelot smiled, very faintly, and without it ever reaching his eyes. “There’s no sense ruining the leather. It’s vintage.”

He trailed a gloved hand along Vamp’s bare shoulder. Vamp didn’t react; he seemed not even to feel it. “Get dressed.”

Vamp did up the front of his pants hastily, but he looked to Solidus before attempting any more.

“It’s all right,” Solidus said. “There will be other chances.”

Vamp retrieved his shirt, and with nimble fingers pulled it back on. He retreated a safe distance to do up the buttons.

“Get out,” Solidus said, without turning, without even acknowledging him with a glance.

Adrian paused near the door, in a moment of boldness. His eyes sought Liquid and their focus was for him alone. “You are very handsome in that coat, Frumos. You are everything the legends promised.”

“Indeed he is,” said Ocelot. “We worked hard to restore him to mint condition, didn’t we? Now run along, why don’t you?”

Vamp didn’t need a second opinion. He cracked the door and slipped outside like a shadow. Liquid was both sorry and relieved to see him go.

Solidus was grinning as he lit himself a cigar. “Quite a declaration. I do enjoy a spirited stable.”

“Don’t you mean kennel? Are we to be thoroughbreds or dogs? I’m getting mixed metaphors.” With calculating awareness, Liquid mirrored his smile, and took a sip of cognac, which he found to be perfectly warmed.

Solidus chuckled. “You were right, Ocelot. He _is_ ready.”

“You say that as if there was any doubt in the quality of my work,” Ocelot replied.

Solidus turned back to Liquid. “Let’s get down to business, shall we? We have work for you, little brother.”

Liquid met his eyes, letting Solidus’ gaze run over and through him. “I’m looking forward to it,” he said.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Greeknico lives! Thanks for the nice comments. Hope you like this chapter.

The debriefing lasted hours. When it was over, Liquid recalled only in the most broad strokes what Solidus had said to fill the time, but fill it he had. His mysterious brother’s primary talent and interest seemed to lie in grandiose speechifying, but Liquid got the impression he had no problem switching to swift and decisive action when the situation warranted it.

Liquid had gotten plenty of chances to size Solidus up, to assess his full capabilities, and he was thoroughly cautioned against underestimating him.

Stepping out into the bright fluorescent glow of the hallway after spending so long under dim club lighting was a shock to the system, but Liquid’s eyes adjusted quickly. Ocelot had come out of the penthouse hard on his heels, and he, too, seemed to adapt in an instant. Liquid walked slowly, giving him plenty of opportunities to pass, but Ocelot stuck to him.

“I see I’m still under observation,” Liquid said. “We can’t abide a relapse. Or is that what you’re hoping for? You can’t wait for another crack at me, can you, Shalashaska?”

“We’re just going the same direction,” Ocelot replied.

“That’s a convenient coincidence. That stunt you pulled in there was also convenient…”

Ocelot glanced at him sidelong, and he raised one gloved index finger to briefly pass over his lips. Silence, he was saying. Though Liquid didn’t like the idea of letting this man dictate what he did, he well-knew the significance of a warning like that. He clamped his mouth shut and set his jaw as they waited for the elevator. When it arrived, Ocelot stepped onboard. Liquid briefly considered waiting for the next one, but he didn’t feel like standing around idle, especially not somewhere Solidus might find him.

When the elevator doors had closed behind them, Ocelot looked up at him. “The hallways are bugged. The elevator is clean, though. I check it regularly. Now, what seems to be the trouble, boss?”

“Why don’t you tell me? What was that little piece of community theater in there for? Some misguided attempt to make me trust you, I suppose. Are you the good cop now? Was Vamp in on it too? Another player in your troupe.”

“No,” Ocelot said. “No, to all of it.”

“Then why do it?”

“I did it because Solidus was out of line. I had already gotten the results we agreed I would get. There was no need for anyone else to get hurt.”

Liquid laughed abruptly. “Listen to you…”

Ocelot turned to look at him, and his eyes flashed. There was something new in his expression at that moment, something Liquid had never seen before, and indeed he felt confident he had seen quite the parade of violent emotions reflected there during their time together.

“We do things a certain way,” Ocelot said sharply. “We’re not animals; we’re men.”

“Do I detect a hint of job dissatisfaction, Shalashaska?”

“You’re welcome to keep pretending you think this is funny,” Ocelot said. “We both know that you take it more seriously than anyone.”

“If you’re talking about the sodomy and torture, I can assure you, I took that very seriously. Did you?”

“I always take my work seriously,” Ocelot said.

The elevator slid to a velvety halt. When the door opened, it was onto a hallway not unlike one in an upscale hotel. The carpet was plush and a few scribbles of tasteful modern art adorned the walls.

“Come,” Ocelot said. He didn’t look back to see that Liquid was following him, but Liquid did all the same. Ocelot led him to one of the heavy oak doors. It swung open at a touch, not even locked. Liquid wasn’t surprised. They probably had the whole floor to themselves.

“What do you want?” Liquid said. His voice came out in a hiss, his throat so tight that he could barely force the words out.

“A talk will do you good,” Ocelot replied. “Man to man.”

“What could I possibly have to talk to you about?”

“Where you’ve come from,” Ocelot said, stepping inside. “And where you are going.”

Liquid rolled his eyes behind Ocelot’s crisply held back. “I came from nothing,” he declared, spreading his hands. “And I suppose that’s where I’m going, at the end of it all.”

Ocelot paused, turned his face ever-so-slightly. Liquid could see the curve of his cheekbone, high and austere. Still handsome, though he must have been more than handsome as a young man. He must, Liquid thought, have been something more like beautiful.

“You did not come from nothing,” Ocelot said, his voice terse and low, but not vicious. Not exactly. Liquid tried to name the emotion that gave his tone that ground-glass quality, but couldn’t quite place it.

“You came, like a heritage rose, from the cuttings of an unparalleled specimen. They cut a slip of his body, thinking to harness his singular presence, his essence, his being. You did not come from nothing. You came from _everything_.”

Liquid knew the emotion now. It was grief.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, softly, and only a little bitterly.

In an instant, the pain was gone. As if, by acknowledging its existence, Liquid had dashed apart the center that held it and sent it careening into oblivion. Ocelot’s face was once again a mask, his voice once more slow drawl that seemed to swallow up all emotion at the source.

“No, you’re nothing like him. You never were.”

Ocelot swept inside, and for a moment he disappeared around a corner. When he came back, he was carrying two bottles of beer. “Sit down,” he told Liquid sharply, as if he hated him. “Drink this. You’d know that you like that brand, if you bothered to remember.”

Liquid took his bottle obediently and had a sip. He watched Ocelot carefully. Though he didn’t expect that careful facade to crack again any time soon, he wanted to be there when it did.

Ocelot took a long drink, and when he lowered the bottle again Liquid got the impression that they were looking at each other as if across a great gulf of distance, or a great expanse of time.

“How’s your memory?” Ocelot said.

Liquid found himself actually considering the question. “Not bad, I suppose,” he murmured. “Given I don’t know what to expect, or how much I’ve forgotten. Though I remember a great deal more now.” His gaze lowered. “Mostly of the man I was.”

 

Knowing that, it was all the more remarkable, wasn’t it, that Snake had deigned to have him in his Philosophy sanctuary. Snake had never forgotten, for a moment, the man he had been.

“You’ll remember more as the days go on,” said Ocelot, almost distractedly. “One day you’ll forget that you ever forgot.”

“That’s prosaic.”

“I’ve seen a good many men with amnesia.” Ocelot paused, squinting as if the sun was in his eyes. “I’ve seen a lot more who couldn’t forget, and wanted to.”

“And in which category do you find yourself?” asked Liquid, a trifle coolly. “And which was dear old dad? There’s a third category, isn’t there? Men who desperately want to remember.”

“I remember well enough,” Ocelot said. “I’m not senile yet. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“You haven’t answered mine.”

“What do you remember about Big Boss?”

Something about the languid way Ocelot said that name, as if he wanted to savor it, made Liquid feel like he really could remember everything. For an instant, a face that he knew he recognized flashed before his eyes like a target upon which he might hang all that he despised.

Liquid opened his mouth to reply, but then he stopped. Ocelot was watching him expectantly, and Liquid could feel him trying to call him back into the past. Sirens to sailors. Back into the past, a heap of rotting bones on a bone-white beach.

“I don’t remember anything from that far back,” Liquid said at last.

“A shame,” Ocelot said. “I knew you back then, when you were a child. I’ve known you longer than almost anyone. And when you thought you were finally rid of me, that’s when I was closer to you than I had ever been.”

“You mean the first time they tortured me. In Iraq, wasn’t it? When I was just a boy.”

Ocelot raised an eyebrow pointedly.

“You mentioned it before,” Liquid said. “But, no. I don’t remember the specifics. So tell me that you were there even if you weren’t. Or that you were not there, even though you were.”

Ocelot looked a little displeased. He sat back, stroking his mustache for a moment. “I should think you would know that it wasn’t my style. Something like that. No, it wasn’t me. Not then.”

“Why don’t you tell me what you remember about Big Boss, Shalashaska, since you seem awfully keen to. Evoking his ghost as you do, with your crumpled handkerchief and your ashes-of-roses.” Liquid paused, tilting his head. “Did it bother you to shed my blood, knowing it was his blood too?”

Ocelot’s lip twitched into something unsmilelike in the shape of a smile. “His blood, but never in his veins. More like an outgrowth, an extension. Or maybe a cancer. Cells found...beyond their bounds. Unnatural. Flawed. Bound for ruin and prone to self-destruction.”

“Very cute,” Liquid said.

“Forgive me for straying so far from the matter at hand,” Ocelot replied. “You wanted to know what I remember of Big Boss. I can tell you that. It’s time I told you.”

Again, the expression on Ocelot’s face flickered, an instant of static flashing across a pristine image. When it dissipated, Ocelot once again wore an inscrutable and emotionless mask, shorn up with fragments he had collected from the wreck and ruin of his great and unassailable past.

“We all get tortured,” Ocelot said after a moment. “I suppose you thought that you were the only one. That would be very much like you.”

Liquid said nothing. He might have, and indeed there was a part of him that wanted to drive a killing blow at that chink in his armor that Ocelot had just revealed. But something held him back: another Liquid Snake, who very much wanted to see where this was going.

“It was in Vietnam,” Ocelot went on. “And not at the beginning. Later on, when that war had long since worn out its welcome. I was sent to see what could be made of it. If things could be better, or worse. It was the first time I’d been on such a long leash, though I suppose at the time I wasn’t thinking about it like that.”

Liquid took a drink of beer and eyed him in receptive silence.

“It was all going well, until it wasn’t. And when it wasn’t, it went as bad as it possibly could.” Ocelot’s gaze wasn’t faraway, it was uncomfortably present, as if the memory was something he breathed new life into and revived with each telling.

“Isn’t that always the way,” murmured Liquid, when no words seemed forthcoming.

Ocelot nodded, slowly. “Yes,” he said, in his sueded way. “And yet it’s never gone that bad again, not for me. I was captured. Restrained. Starved, beaten, degraded.” His eyes dropped. “They broke my hands. I was frantic over that. Frantic over thinking that even if some miracle came to pass, and I escaped, they might have already begun to heal wrong. That they’d be ruined, no matter what, and me with them.”

He looked up, and his eyes were strangely raw.

Liquid frowned, avoiding his gaze. “Like any virtuoso. You mightn’t be faulted for fearing that.”

“I truly thought I was going to die,” said Ocelot. “That this was the end of me, an ignominious exit stage left in a backdoor war. Potential squandered on a lark.” He paused. “In the days that passed, I made peace with death, but I never welcomed it. Never begged for it. Even in the darkest hours. I simply admitted it was likely.”

Liquid briefly thought to ask him who it was that had captured him, on what side he had been fighting. He quickly realized how pointless a question that would be, how vulgar to ask it. For men like Ocelot and him, it had never been a question of who they fought for. They had only ever fought for themselves.

“And yet,” Liquid said instead.

“And yet,” Ocelot went on. “Something unexpected happened. He came for me there. Somehow, against all probability and sense, he found me. He took me out of there. I couldn’t walk, but he carried me.” Ocelot’s mouth had settled into the shape of a smile, but it was not an expression that reached his eyes.

“Me,” he said quietly. “Can you imagine it?”

He stopped then, leaving Liquid to guess whether or not he had finished speaking. When no more seemed forthcoming, Liquid said, “So you adored him. He saved your life, and you loved him for that. It’s a good story, Ocelot.”

“No,” Ocelot said. “That’s not it. Because I loved him before that, from the moment I saw him. But it took the pain, the humiliation. That experience of being carried out of the jungle, of knowing that I was at his mercy, just as I had always been at men’s mercies. For no other reason than the star I was born under, than my genes. I was feverish, but I had my wits about me enough to realize all that. And almost as soon as I had, I realized, too, that if this was the way it had to be, then I wanted it to be with him.”

Ocelot’s eyes thinned. “I wanted to be his. I don’t mean it as a romantic cliche, or a rhetorical flourish. I wanted to be something belonging to him. A single finger on a single hand of someone else. And in that jungle, while I sweated and seethed and wrestled with the pain, that thing that I had always known was love went from being a vague notion to being a cold and inescapable fact.”

Liquid stared for several moments, quietly stricken. “I see,” he managed to say, after a time. The words were the most unvarnished he had ever heard from anyone’s lips, much less Revolver Ocelot’s. “You make it sound...beautiful.” His brow knitted. “Admirable.”

His heart had pounded along with Ocelot’s carefully chosen words. He knew what it was, to be lost and consigned to death. And he knew what it was to be come for. He felt an overwhelming resonance with Ocelot in that moment, an understanding of his purpose.

“He came for you, in that dark place. Was it because he loved you too?” Liquid raised his eyes to Ocelot’s, seeking, penetrating in pale blue. “After all those days with only the memory of your face, was he frantic?”

“I don’t know,” said Ocelot. “He never told me what those days were like. He would never talk about them.”

“But did he love you?”

“Do you think I’m unworthy of love?”

Liquid felt a hectic urgency, but he sieved it from his voice. “I want to know if an unworthy man, a bad man, can be loved.”

“John loved me. Apart from my own mother, I’m not sure anyone else could.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Liquid said. “About having a mother.”

“Ah,” Ocelot said. “Then I misspoke.”

And at that moment, Liquid could really believe that he had. Ocelot, who had never wasted a gesture or said a word that he wasn’t expecting to pay off further down the line, had been so caught up in the past that he had simply let something slip.

“You were lucky,” Liquid said. He was afraid he had sounded accusing, though he had not meant to.

“Yes, I’ve always had the most uncanny sort of luck. But I hope that answers your question all the same. Even the worst of men can be loved, with a little luck.”

Then, he stood up. He moved smoothly back towards the kitchen - to freshen up their drinks, Liquid supposed, or only to have an excuse to be somewhere else for a while. But as he passed the chair where Liquid sat, his hand came out. He made as if to touch Liquid’s shoulder, but he stopped just short of it. Instead, his hand glided by, close enough that Liquid felt the heat of it but not the actual pressure.

“Solidus does not even have that, you know,” he said. And then he was gone.


	20. Chapter 20

When the generator had been gassed up and the furnace started, when the canned goods had been stocked in military-precise rows in the cabinets and the pipes had been coaxed into giving up a trickle of icy water, only then did Snake have to admit that there was very little left to do but the one thing he had been putting off.

It wasn’t like him, to avoid the task at hand. But this time around, he intended to do exactly that for as long as he could get away with it.

With that dogged aim in mind, Snake made his way into the main room where Otacon was cooing over his laptop. The cold was hard on the battery, or so Otacon had told him about a hundred times on the way out to the Alaska cabin. 

Snake hadn’t been out here in years, but he had kept it up, even paying a local to come out every few months and tidy things up. He’d known he was going to need it one day, and, ever since Vamp had shown up at the place in New York, now seemed as likely a time as any.

“How’s it going out here?” Snake asked. He was aiming for gruff and authoritative, but he had the distinct impression he’d missed the mark and landed in the vicinity of restless.

“How do you think it’s going?” Otacon said. “This satellite modem is terrible. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get anything done like this.”

“We’re laying low, if you recall,” Snake replied. “So don’t go logging in to Ribbit or whatever you’re thinking. Not even to check your messages.”

Otacon shot him a guilty look, like a golden retriever caught in the catbox. “Reddit’s anonymous,” he said defensively.

“Nothing’s anonymous,” said Snake. “Not for us. You know that, Hal.”

“I made a throwaway, jeez.”

“Throwaway?”

“A fake name. A burner account. Anyway, don’t get all worked up. I’m pretty sure Ocelot’s not doing an AMA or anything.”

Snake shook his head, exasperated. “Just...stop playing games and get your shit together.”

Hal paused, then turned in his chair, slowly, steepling his fingers like a Bond villain. “My...shit? Why would I need that?”

Snake rolled his eyes. “Listen, Hal, we don’t have time for a big drawn-out fagdance. I need you ready to support me as soon as I’m ready to deploy.”

“That’s really offensive, Snake. Do you kiss your brother with that mouth?”

“Just get yourself in order. I don’t want to discuss it.”

“But...we are going after him, right? Just to clarify?”

Snake made a surly noise in lieu of assent. 

“Your brother, Liquid Snake.”

“You wanna actually fucking do it or just write a filk about it?”

“You stole that joke from me,” Otacon sniffed. He was right, and Snake knew he shouldn’t have done it. He couldn’t carry off a line like that, and besides Otacon rarely managed to carry one off at all.

“Small victories,” Snake muttered. He picked his backpack up from the dusty sofa and made a great show of hunting through the pockets for cigarettes. At least Otacon couldn’t complain about him smoking in the house, not with all the wood smoke the stove was putting out.

He had forgotten that he hated this fucking place. Hated it mostly for its memories of Meryl, and its associations with his failures. Which was not to say that he didn’t also hate it because it was freezing cold, dark most of the year, impossible to keep up, and a magnet for every bear in north Canada.

“I’m going to check the kennels,” Snake snapped, and he went out into the snow. It was drifted up, powdery. On the way in, Otacon had tried to brain him with a snowball and the thing had turned to dust in his hand. The wind had gusted up and blown it all back in Otacon’s face, and, from the way he had yelped about it, down his collar for good measure.

The kennels were a log building about 50 yards out from the cabin. He’d gotten rid of the dogs a long time ago, and all that was left was a few wire cages and an electric fence he’d put up to keep the wolves out. No power ran to it anymore. Snake raked down a section to make a passage into the kennel but once he was inside there wasn’t much to do but straighten up the fallen, crumpled cages and kick the dirty snow around.

His brother had never been here, though he had been closer than most. Shadow Moses was only about 200 miles away - just a quick trip up the road by Alaska standards - across a sound that froze in the winter and through a dense briar patch of bad memories.  
He’d be here soon enough, Snake thought. He could not allow himself to entertain any other possibilities. He could well-imagine finding Liquid again, bailing him out again, bringing him back again. But past that, he could not imagine at all.

Liquid would probably drive him crazy in an isolated place like this. Especially with Hal Gundamming around, and nowhere for them to get any privacy. Snake grimaced. Him to get some privacy, not them. The mental correction just made him more irritable, like even his subconscious was against him on this one.

Between Liquid’s dauntless nature and his own inexorable id, Dave wondered if he actually stood a chance against his brother. If he ever really had. If not for Foxdie, and Liquid’s Icarus-like penchant for overreaching his own grasp, would Solid Snake have carried the day?

But did it matter, if that was always his brother’s downfall? If it was a foregone conclusion? Liquid was a lost cause, like he’d always been. Not his problem.

Yet here he was, going after his brother, straight into Solidus and Ocelot’s dark arms. With not a little bitterness, Snake considered whether he had his own Achilles’ Heel, something apart from misanthropy and cigarettes, masquerading as a blind spot all these years.

He slammed the chicken-wire doors of the kennels closed and checked the latches all down the line. He had no real reason to be out here, except to give Otacon time to pack up his nerdtastic magic show--and to avoid letting Hal in on the truth: that he’d packed his own gear before they ever left Philanthropy.

When he got back to the house, Hal was monologuing about his short list of extraction plans, cataloguing the equipment they had on retainer as part of Philanthropy’s housekeeping. No matter what else he might have been, Otacon was thorough, and he had a far better sense for this business than anyone who had been dragged into it kicking and screaming and wetting his pants ever should have.

He was still soliloquizing about his methods as Snake went into the kitchen and dumped a can of soup into a pan and heated it on the stove. Nothing to do now but wait. Otacon would tell him what to do soon enough, but until then Snake was about as useless to this operation as an ejection seat on a helicopter.

He may have had a steady hand when it came to holding a gun, but he’d always needed someone else to tell him where to aim. It was fine. That was fine with him. He lived without notions in his head. Once you started getting those, you might as well bleach your hair and start practicing your elocution in the mirror.


	21. Chapter 21

There wasn’t as much blood as he had thought there would be. Liquid had remembered a great deal over the past few weeks. Most of it useful; much of it interesting. Some of it - courtesy of Revolver Ocelot - he could have gone without ever having to think about again.

Regardless, one thing that he hadn’t remembered was how bloodless a really clean and professional murder could be.

There was a little bit of red splattered over his left hand, the one he had done the job with, but other than that he looked polished, fresh, well-rested. As if he’d spent the last 24 hours at a yoga retreat rather than stalking a target through the streets of Tashkent. 

He didn’t feel much different, either, and on that account he was more than a little disappointed. It had been his first job since his rebirth as the man he had always been. The labor had been long and the pains great, but he was here now and there ought to have been at least a smattering of applause for that.

The world, as usual, stubbornly refused to recognize his many good qualities. The job would never make the news. Other lifers on the mercenary circuit would eventually get a version of it, passed down in the distorted and inarticulate oral tradition of the business. Liquid knew that was about the best he could hope for.

A chopper picked him up on a landing pad on top of one of the big new office complexes in the city center. As they headed west, Liquid watched the lights of the city disappear back into the desert. It had seemed like a nice place, with a lot of history. A good city to kill someone and have it, just for a moment, seem like poetry.

Now he was back in his opulent cage, absorbing the spoils of a job well done. First it was a long soak in a hot tub, and a brutal massage. Then it was lobster and creme fraiche and caviar on toast points and creme brulee and champagne. And now it was an open bar, never dry, always well-stocked.

He’d done well, at least to hear Ocelot tell it. He tried to find meaning in the plaudit.

He swirled the cognac in his glass and stared into the fireplace, willing it warm his bones. One of them would, the flames or the liquor, and he didn’t care which.

It was then that he heard the door crack, and knew he’d been served one last course. He hadn’t known it was coming, but he couldn’t be too surprised, either.

“Eli cel Frumos,” said Vamp, quietly. “It hurts to look at you. I forget how bright you are.”

Vamp didn’t steal into his quarters like a thief anymore, but he still walked without a sound. Liquid hadn’t heard a thing until he appeared in the mouth of the hallway.

Liquid didn’t feel bright. He felt dark and tarnished, stained sanguine by slaughter and struggle. He was clean, he was warm, but he was not radiant. Perhaps he never had been. Perhaps, for all his blondness and bravado, he had always been the dark twin.

“Adrian,” he said, pouring himself more cognac. “Join me. Have a glass.”

Vamp came into the room and sank into the chair across from him. Wordless, he seemed almost sultry. It wasn’t his fault, thought Liquid. It was just the way he was built.

“Are you Ocelot’s idea of dessert?” Liquid asked.

“He did not send me,” said Vamp. “I came because I wanted to.”

“So you did,” Liquid said. He did not believe that for an instant, though he supposed Vamp believed it very much.

Vamp didn’t reply. He seemed content to sip the cognac in silence. His eyes were downcast, but Liquid had the distinct impression that he was being watched from beneath the long, girlish fringe of Vamp’s lashes. 

Something had changed between them, and the moment he realized that Liquid felt a barb of regret lodge in his chest. It was a sharp pain, out of proportion to the situation, and he realized that, for all he had begun to feel like he was uncovering the archaeological wreck of his former self, there were still things to discover. Old traumas, like badly-healed wounds, that flared up at the first whiff of abandonment or mistrust.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Liquid told him. His voice seemed loud to him, as if he were only speaking to fill up the space,

“You don’t have to say anything.”

“Then I don’t know what you want me to do.” Liquid’s brows contracted in an unconscious reflex, like a wince of pain. “I know what they want, but not you. Never you.”

Vamp set his glass aside. Now he was watching Liquid very closely, dead on and no longer with an attitude of stolen glances. Like he was a very discreet shrink, Liquid thought bitterly, or perhaps a very talented spy.

“I can see that something has unsettled you.”

Liquid frowned. “Oh. I suppose you could say that. I suppose I was unsettled, just now, by how very easy I find murder. How naturally it comes to me, without a second thought, or a moment’s hesitation.” He glanced at Vamp, hearing his own voice, cool and casual, like a man at a watercooler, enquiring after a colleague’s wife. “Is it that way for you?”

Adrian looked down at his hands, reminding Liquid of Lady Macbeth. “I do what I must.”

“Yes,” said Liquid, studying him. “I imagine you do. And yet it pains you, on some level. Here’s what I am beginning to fear realizing, Adrian, my darling: that it has never pained me. That before I came out of that body bag, I had nothing like humanity. How long before I become that man again?”

He paused, his voice dropping, soft. “How long do I have?”

Adrian was quiet for a while, long enough that Liquid began to wonder if he intended to answer at all. Then, he stood abruptly. “Do you mind if I help myself to a drink?”

“Take whatever you like,” Liquid said. Adrian was already moving, sweeping over to the sideboard as if he couldn’t wait to put distance between them. Liquid, it seemed, was not the only one who was unsettled.

He watched Adrian’s turned back as he poured a glass of whiskey and drained it without looking back. Even he could not face the monstrous truth. Just then, he had caught a glimpse of Liquid’s true face, and he had recoiled from it.

Let him, Liquid told himself. He didn’t need Adrian’s platitudes in order to do what he did. He didn’t need his concern, or his pet names, or his cock for that matter. By this point, he’d more than proven that he did much better on his own.

It was what his pride wanted, but not what he did. Liquid sighed, passing a hand over his eyes. “Adrian, I’m sorry.”

Vamp poured the second drink that he had been hesitating over, then he came back, sipping it this time. “For what?”

“You’ve been wonderful. I’ve made you do so much for me. I didn’t even notice.”

“You haven’t made me do anything,” Vamp said, flatly, and there was an edge to the words, one he hadn’t heard before. “Stop flattering yourself, Liquid Snake, that you’re the only man in the room with agency, and acumen, and a destiny. Or that your lack of belief in your own free will is the mirror of mine.”

Liquid saw no fear in his eyes. They were irked, perhaps, or even angry, but there was none of the horror and revulsion that he had imagined when Vamp’s back was turned. He stared, fascinated. If he had projected this much onto his blue-eyed lover, were there other fatalist projections he was harboring?

Was it all intentional on Ocelot and Solidus’ part? Was this how they ground him down and re-cast him? Plant a seed, set him free and let his own intractable mind and stubborn nature do the rest of the demolition?

“You are not powerless,” Vamp said, contemptuously. “You are not a tabula rasa, a palimpcest to be erased and re-graven at their pleasure. You are not the man you were. Perhaps you were not even that man then.”

He was gripping the arms of the chair, white-knuckled, without realizing it. Vamp leaned over him.

“Always remember this, Eli cel Frumos: whatever I do, to, with and for you, I intend-- with every drop and atom of my blood and marrow. Do not spurn it.”

His voice was low; not quite a whisper. The sound sent ripples through Liquid’s skin.

“Adrian,” breathed Liquid, before he even realized he had said it.

“And if you cannot trust me, always think of me fondly. Will you promise me that much?”

‘I promise,” Liquid said at once. Vamp’s hot eyes were still on him, burning. Liquid lowered his own gaze to escape them, and he laughed bloodlessly. “Though I was trying to be nice.”

“Then I apologize,” Vamp said. He reached out and took Liquid’s chin and tilted it back so he could kiss him. Liquid could taste the whiskey on his lips. “I suppose I have a lot on my mind.”

Liquid felt his lips relax back into a familiar shape. A smile: grim, determined, and without kindness. “Maybe I can help unburden you.”

“I would like that,” Vamp said. His hand settled over Liquid’s, but he waited for Liquid to get to his feet, to pull him along, before he stood. 

“You have always been a man of action,” Vamp went on. Liquid’s fingers were busy at his shirtfront, undoing the buttons. Vamp stood still while he worked, hands knotted at his sides. “How I envied you that. Once you had decided your course, you were always so swift and sure.”

Liquid kissed him abruptly, taking him by surprise so that Vamp’s lips continued to move for a moment, their words ground into silence.

“How I love you,” Vamp sighed.

It was Liquid’s turn to be taken aback. Vamp continued on their lustful trajectory, as if the words were so artless as to be self-evident, persuading his duster off his shoulders, angling inward to graze cool lips against his hammering pulse.

Had he ever heard those words? In truth, he didn’t know. It seemed as if they would have left some indelible mark, if he had--the kind of brand that not even Ocelot could blot out or efface. Or was that wishful thinking; the idea that love was a force that could withstand even brainwashing.

The man in his arms was ardent, enduring, almost ancient, in a way. Adrian was infinite, like igneous stone under water. A different kind of strength than his, but no less a force of nature. It had taken him some time to understand that.

One thing was not hard to understand, and he had known it for some time.

He grasped Adrian’s face, smoothing his hair back from the temples and gazing hard into his glacial eyes. “And I love you,” he whispered, inches from his lips. “No matter what.”

It was more than many men were given.

He found himself echoing Ocelot, as he led Vamp toward his bed. “Even bad men deserve love.”

“But they must be ruthless enough to take it,” Vamp said, with the barest hint of a smile. Liquid tugged him through the connecting door to the bedroom. The lights were on, low, and Liquid reached to dim them further.

In the instant before he touched the switch, they went out entirely. He was left in darkness, his eyes adjusting rapidly, his mind already taking note for the absence of an electrical hum, the unmistakable silence that came when the power was cut.

***  
“Snake, do you have eyes on the target?” Otacon’s voice sounded tinny on his CODEC. Snake shook his head slightly to clear out the buzzing, but he didn’t want to chance moving much more. Six feet and four inches of lean muscle was a lot of mass to pack into a cardboard box, a fact which Snake had been forced to accept even before the years had intervened to stiffen up his knees and tighten up his back.

“The target? You mean my brother, as you keep reminding me?”

“Sure,” Otacon replied. “Who else would I mean?” 

“Are we going to get this over with sometime tonight?” Snake growled. “So help me, Hal, if you’re watching video game livestreams on the other monitor…”

“It’s done.”

“The game? You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that--”

“The power. That’s done. I mean, out. I shut it off for the entire floor. You have about two minutes before the emergency generators kick in.”

“God dammit! Why didn’t you say something?”

“I just did.” Otacon was eating something. He could hear the wrapper crackling.

Snake gritted his teeth and flipped on his nightvision again. He’d turned it on in the box, only to be confronted with the words “24-case bulk Beluga caviar”, which had made him swear and turn it off again. What kind of ship was this sick fuck running, anyway?

The box was in a storage closet at the end of the hall. Once out in the hallway he stole along the wall, keeping an eye out for anything amiss, or anyone who might come running to troubleshoot the blackout.

“You sure he’s up here?” He was on the second floor down, near the top of the high-rise. “Not in some dungeon with Ocelot?” In spite of himself, he grimaced at the thought.

“Well, admittedly, it’s just a guess. But if I’m wrong, you can just work your way down.”

“Yeah,” muttered Snake. “No problem.”

The hall was well-carpeted, like an upscale but anonymous hotel. The doors had heavy deadbolts but no keyholes on the outside. They locked and unlocked electronically, presumably not at the whim of whoever was currently occupying the suites. The first one that Snake tried opened easily at the touch of his hand.

He slipped inside, letting the door fall closed once more behind him with barely a click. He surveyed the room, taking in the tasteful furniture, the bare walls without so much as a discreet corporate art print, two empty glasses sitting on the table.

There was a door leading back to a bedroom. It was slightly ajar, but Snake couldn’t see inside. A light was on in there, and when filtered through Snake’s night vision goggles it looked like so much green static.

Reluctantly, Snake lifted the goggles and set them on top of his head. He saw him then, his brother, Liquid Snake, his clothes in disarray, holding a lit candle in one hand and wearing an expression of exasperation as he emerged from the bedroom.

Liquid saw him, too, at almost the same instant. He didn’t move, didn’t say anything, didn’t even have the decency to look surprised, the prick.

“Well?” Snake said. It felt like they had both been silent for a long time, just contemplating each other, and he was starting to get a little impatient. “Let’s go already.”

“I was--” Liquid looked behind him, almost bemused. He seemed distracted, somehow, like all the blood wasn’t getting to his head. “In the middle of something.”

Someone else appeared out of the shadowy mouth of the bedroom, just behind his shoulder. The freak-show who went by Vamp. Of course.

“Yeah,” said Snake, “I bet you were.”

Vamp’s face was not like his brother’s. He was alert, attuned at once. His hands found Liquid’s arms. “You must go.”

“I’m not ready.”

Snake rolled his eyes. “We’ll buy you a new toothbrush and you can borrow Otacon’s pajamas. We’ve got about one minute until the power comes back.”

Liquid’s lips parted. “I can’t leave him.”

“Your friend here?” Snake checked his head at Vamp. “He wanted this. He’s on board, Liquid. He’s the one who came to us. Ask him yourself.”

Liquid half-turned, and regarded Vamp’s face solemnly in the dim light. He said nothing at first, but then he seemed to have found what he was looking for there.

“I see,” he said quietly. And then, “I suppose you have always known what is best for me, Adrian.”

He started to move towards Snake, even putting out his hand as if to touch him. Before he could, however, the overhead lights flickered back to life. Ahead of schedule, Snake thought with a scowl, making a mental note to remind Otacon about conservative estimates later on.

They about had things wrapped up here, though. If Liquid was half as light on his feet as he looked, they should be able to get out without much trouble.

But Vamp was starting to worry him. He had wound up tight as soon as the light came back on. His eyes strayed to the corner of the room. Probably a camera hidden up there in the molding; they were recording the whole thing.

All at once, Vamp moved. He skirted around them in two swift steps, and planted himself between Snake and the door. A knife had appeared in his hand.

“Solidus can never know of this.”

“Come with me.” Liquid reached for him. Vamp stepped out of his reach, steely-eyed.

“He’s not invited,” growled Snake.

“He’s scary!” Otacon shouted in his ear, over CODEC. Snake scowled.

“I won’t go without him.” Liquid reached out again, and Vamp parried with the knife like sleight of hand, knocking his wrist aside, drawing a delicate bead of blood, like a last kiss.

Vamp was looking past Liquid, straight at Snake, unflinching.

“Shoot me,” he said, through gritted teeth and unmoving lips. Snake knew he was masking his words for the camera. “Now.”

Liquid’s expression tightened, as if some hidden mechanism inside of him had wound up, taking in the last of the slack. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. Once, Liquid had promised Snake he would kill him, and the words had been imparted with the same cold-minded determination and certainty. He hadn’t forgotten who he was; he had only briefly forgotten that he remembered.

“You will,” Vamp said. “Because you must.”

“Not for them,” Liquid said. His eyes were lowered, expression curtained behind his hair. Something was going on back there, just out of sight. All at once, his head came up, and he turned with a flourish so that his gaze was fixed on the concealed camera. 

Snake saw Vamp wind up to spring, and later he would try to tell himself that he had reacted on instinct and muscle memory. But he would know that wasn’t true. The truth was, he had seen a glimpse of his brother’s old self, and he had taken it for granted that Liquid hated him, the way it had always been meant to be, and if that was the case, there was no harm in giving him another excuse.

He grabbed Liquid’s arm with one hand, and wrenched him toward the door. In the same moment, he freed his pistol from the holster at his belt and brought it up and fired a single shot that caught Vamp between the eyes. His head snapped back and a decent quantity of blood splattered the wall behind him, but he stayed on his feet for a moment, reeling. Snake didn’t think that he felt much though, for what it was worth.

Snake felt his brother’s scream even more than he heard it--a seismic, full-body howl of rage and grief, as he struggled violently against Snake, fighting to get back through the doorway, fighting to return to Adrian’s body. He felt an old sea of unease rise, as the muscle memory of Liquid’s uncanny and equal strength returned.

“Snake! Snake, what’s happening? Snake!” He heard Otacon respond, safely removed from it all, panic in his voice.

“It’s done. He’s gone,” Snake said to Liquid, his voice sharp and hectic, pitched to penetrate, giving him a brutal shake. “Now all you have is me.”

He squeezed hard enough to leave bruises. Bruises, like the ones Liquid had when they unzipped him. Snake grimaced at the memory. He’d been hard to carry, then - resisting every step of the way, and he wasn’t even fighting. Or alive.

“Don’t make me knock you out,” he muttered. On second thought…

Liquid gave one last pull, enough to break free of Snake’s hold. He stumbled a step, back the way he had come, but then he stopped abruptly as if something had frozen him in his tracks. He straightened up, and turned. When he looked Snake in the face, his expression was composed, as if he had instantly erected a stone edifice to protect something brittle within.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said quietly.

“There’s a lot I shouldn’t have done.”

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

“No,” Snake said. “That was right. That was one thing I got right.”

He held out his hand, though he didn’t expect Liquid to take it. Liquid surprised him again, though, which was about the only thing Snake knew to expect from him. He reached out and took Snake’s hand briefly, but then he was surging forward, outpacing him, heading for the exit Snake had already scouted and that, it seemed, had not gone unnoticed by Liquid, no matter how docile he had appeared.


End file.
